Intention
What does he mean to say?
Outside the Wells Fargo on 82nd and Foster a man in gray paces with his cardboard sign. I can’t see the words but can predict the message: “Hungry, every little bit helps,” or “Disabled Veteran,” or “Lost my job, need help,” or “Wells Fargo took my house” …. I wonder if he chose this corner for its backdrop, if he knew the irony of begging for money outside a bank. For the few seconds that I sit at the light, I think this would make an interesting photograph. As a matter of fact, I think, it may even be more interesting if it was a photograph. But why? I think it has something to do with intention, the idea that someone took the time, the initiative to capture the image. It’s the fact that we get to slow it down and keep it in our minds longer, maybe. The framing of an event like this using technology, whether it be a camera or a pen and a piece of paper (or a blog, for that matter), gives it gravitas. Someone wanted people to see this, you think; it must matter. Like the time, over twenty years ago, when a friend of my mom’s found a piece of folded up paper on the street. It could have been trash, probably would have been ignored by most people, but she picked it up, unfolded it, read it and gave it to my mother. It started like this: “Journel [sic] Rick Gordon, age 34 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 9-7-85 The month is September and Oklahoma is hot as Texas. I’ve been free for about three months now….” The entry, on three sheets of yellow, lined, 5×7″ paper, was brief and personal, written by a man who said he was a fugitive and talked about paying his own rent for a week for the first time in three years, of being clean finally and proud. It ended with a list of questions about whether or not he’s up to the challenge of being free and trying to make it on his own, whether he even wanted to stay alive. And inside the folded pages lay a business card for a pawn shop covered in Rick Gordon’s cursive lists and calculations. Ever since his words ended up in my possession, I’ve wondered about his intentions for that piece of paper. Why did he need to write his thoughts down? Did it make the experience of surviving more real for him? Did he hope that someday, maybe after his death, that someone else would read his journal? I can’t say, but there’s something to this whole idea of intentionality, the idea that someone was behind a thing (a piece of writing, a photograph) embedding their own thoughts and emotions into it hoping for someone else to come by and dig them out.
This guy is smart. Most people who say “I’m sorry, I don’t have any money” while leaving a bank will be lying. How often do you leave a bank without money. Even if you went in there to deposit, you’re probably gonna get a little, too.
I like your theory that dude is standing there because he lost his house to the bank.
What do you mean by, “it may even be more interesting if it was a photograph”?
Shira, when I was at that intersection and saw the man in front of the bank, I thought, “This would be a great photograph,” and then I thought, “It would be more interesting if it was a photograph.” Which is why I decided to make this my blog post, because I thought that was a strange line of thinking. Why would that make the scene more interesting? And the only answer I could come up with is intentionality. Which I’m sure some could argue makes things less interesting. Maybe spontaneity and lack of forethought makes a scene like that more interesting, but my thinking was that if I saw that scene in, say, a photo gallery, I would think it was brilliant, while seeing it in real life, real time felt kind of common place and easily dismissible. Like, what if no one else ever sees this the way I am or has a chance to think about it in these terms? Then it’s lost forever. But if it was a photograph, it could become something bigger than itself, I think. Does that make sense?
Oh, it sounds like you are saying that the image could have been more striking/moving if captured as a photograph than if seen in real life because we become accustomed to glossing over so many scenes in which desperation is enacted. I know better than to question your good intentions and humanity, but I feared that one could read the sentence to mean that the photograph would be better than the actual man and his very real needs.
Thanks for clearing up something for me that I surely should not have needed clarification on.
No worries. I probably could have been clearer in my blog. It was a fast write. I just had this feeling that what the man was doing there in front of that bank was kind of genius and important, but because we see homeless people with signs all the time, the message (and their “very real needs”) often get lost. That’s why I thought the scene could be even more interesting if made into a piece of “art,” so to speak. It adds a layer, an intentional observer behind the lens saying, “Hey, people, look at this!”