TL; DR: 6 photos below- ChatGpeeT, Wandering Bishop, Love Kevlar, Canned Santa, Chair Samaritans, Twilight Walker…
Partiers shout-talk in the alley post-club. The alley sits between a house and residential lofts; a large condo building also faces its entrance, and many more apartments tower behind and above — people live all around. The clubbers are so full of booze their ear canals are sloshing, which drowns out the tiny amount of their hearing that still remains after hours of sub-bass. It’s 4 am. At this decibel level the partiers could be employed by the government as sonic torture to keep terrorists awake. Sleep is impossible. But photographs... I look out the window and see one of the human megaphones down below, a woman. Click. Suddenly she peels off her dress and panties, squats and pees beside a parked car. Hmm. Well, loud. Ok click. A man walks through the alley. Click. Another man goes behind the car and relieves his bladder into the neighbor’s yard. He looks left and notes out-LOUD that the woman sure is urinating a lot. The woman stands up, naked from the waist down. They casually talk-shout 6 feet apart for a bit. Click. Still-half naked, she walks over and hugs him. Click.
Editing the photos later, my four-in-the-morning irritation softens: in one of the shots you could see, when the woman squatted to pee, that someone had reached out from the front seat of the car to clasp her hand. A crass, rude, narcissistic sleep disruptor… was suddenly a girl who had a friend who held her hand so she wouldn’t tumble over. She was was loved.
The moment above is private, but also very public; unusual but also universal; uncouth, but also, by being so natural, kinda delightful. (And/Or: the act of taking the photo has made it so.) Do I show the photo? Hmm. Well, love. The hand reaching out, the kindness. The click, OK.
More kindness from The Window photo series:
This man ambled by, turned into the alley, and stood motionless for some time. Then he came back out front, sat on the stairs, and fell asleep just at sunset. A few hours later he was gone, but his luggage was still there. I retrieved it. His ID was in the bag, along with a diary, which had one entry: “Memoirs of a Wandering Bishop”. After calls to the cops, the airport, a bit of google sleuthing, messages to strangers on Facebook, and eventually phoning his family in Nova Scotia, I got his local hotel number and left a message. He showed up the next day. I noticed him down the block, paused in the middle of the sidewalk. I went down to meet him. He’d been having a tough time: cross-country bus ride from the US, denied travel at the airport for not being vaccinated, no money, and some other personal stuff. I gave him his suitcase. He was surprised someone had done a kindness for him — “I do that, but people, you know, never do it for me”. He shook my hand, then walked to the corner. He stood there for a few minutes, unmoving, before wandering off down the street.
3 a.m. Again. People are ducking and hiding because there is a shooting. As they cower on the ground a man protects his date, warding off the bullets with love and an enveloping hug.
Delivery men unloading flats of beer are repeatedly interrupted by a disheveled man wearing a black hoodie. He comes up to talk, they keep working. He leaves, then comes back to chat. He’s convivial, they are polite. He leaves again, but boomerangs around. He engages them some more; they listen as they grunt and lift and push and roll. Finally one of the workers gestures to the man to come with him. They disappear behind the truck. A moment later the man in the hoodie appears, now carrying a giant bag of empty cans (the delivery man’s personal stash, his extra take-home pay, his hard-earned secret bonus). The man in the hoodie thanks him, says Merry Christmas, and heads off like Santa with a see-through sack full of crushed aluminum gifts. The workers smile, and continue lifting, pushing, and rolling the stacks, and stacks, and stacks of booze.
A girl is supine on the sidewalk at one-sixteen in the morning. A couple of passersby filch a patio chair and help her off the concrete and upright. One guy hustles to get her a glass of water from a nearby restaurant (and another for the man passed out in the planter). They hold her up, and hover around her, for well over an hour until somebody comes to take her home.
From day, to twilight, to night, one woman walks with another.
NOTES & LINKS:
-thanks for sharing and spreading the word about the art
-chatGpeeT pics, more: HERE
-wandering bishop more photos/info: “What’s the Story”
-chair samaritans girl earlier shot, this post: “ne’re attives”
-canned santa, more pix in the sequence exist; just not online
-love kevlar night, more images: fight sequence (top line), & cruella deville crime-scene photographer & lipstick car, bottom right: The Window vignettes page
-twilight walker: i took 3 shots, over 12 minutes, of the mother and daughter as they walked, without stopping, from the right side of the planter to the left; they were in no hurry, no hurry at all, as they walked gently into that good night.
-The Window by K.I.A. is a 24/7/365/1 durational photo series-slash-nascent exhibition-virgule-book re: the velocity, frailty, vanity, technology, diversity, humanity, virgulity & beauty of life in the 21st century…