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The Daily Wildcat

The Daily Wildcat
All content by Nicholas Leon
This was taken about halfway up the block on the east side of Broadway, between 79th and 80th Street. Its at the north end of the Filenes Basement store on the corner, and its a place where Ive often seen homeless people holding up a sign that asks for assistance... With very rare exceptions, I havent photographed these homeless people; it seems to me that theyre in a very defensive situation, and I dont want to take advantage of their situation. But something unusual was happening here: the two women (who were actually cooperating, and acting in tandem, despite the rather negative demeanor of the woman on the left) were giving several parcels of food to the young homeless man on the right. I dont know if the women were bringing food from their own kitchen, or whether they had brought it from a nearby restaurant. But it was obviously a conscious, deliberate activity, and one they had thousght about for some time... What was particularly interesting was that they didnt dwell, didnt try to have a conversation with the young man;they gave him they food they had brought, and promptly walked away. As they left, I noticed the young man peering into his bag (the one you see on the ground beside him in this picture) to get a better sense of the delicious meal these two kind women had brought him... ********************** This is part of an evolving photo-project, which will probably continue throughout the summer of 2008, and perhaps beyond: a random collection of interesting people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. I dont like to intrude on peoples privacy, so I normally use a telephoto lens in order to photograph them while theyre still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on whats right in front of me. Ive also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So Ive learned to keep the camera switched on (which contradicts my traditional urge to conserve battery power), and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, its pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. For the most part, Ive deliberately avoided photographing bums, drunks, drunks, and crazy people. There are a few of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally dont want to be photographed, and I dont want to feel like Im taking advantage of them. Im still looking for opportunities to take some sympathetic pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. Well see how it goes ... The only other thing Ive noticed, thus far, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, *far* more people who are *not* so interesting. Theyre probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones Ive photographed ... but there was just nothing memorable about them.

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The Daily Wildcat
The Arizona Daily Wildcat is the award-winning, student-managed and -produced news outlet serving the University of Arizona and greater Tucson since 1899.
The Daily Wildcat publishes daily at DailyWildcat.com, and regularly distributes its nationally-recognized print newspaper across the UA campus and neighboring communities.
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