An exhibition of photos by anthropologist Darci J Pauser taken in the Lower East Side of NYC and Roseville, CA.
In movement through unarrayed space, one becomes external to the striated structures of the state. With this externality comes subsistence on the very waste of the internal structures. This exhibition addresses the nomadic lives of the houseless through an exploration of consumption, development, and alienation.
Worth Ryder Gallery
Kroeber Hall
UC Berkeley Campus
Opening Reception and Artist’s Talk June 1, 2007 from 7-9 pm
Gallery Hours June 2nd-7th 11am-5pm
Free and open to the public
See also the website for the conference where I will present my non-photo fieldwork entitled “Houseless: Agents of Our Own Destruction” on April 28th at 2:45 p.m. http://research.berkeley.edu/haas_scholars/scholars/2006-2007/news/confprog.html
The photo exhibit will include photos of not only the houseless and their environment, but tract homes from my hometown of Roseville as well. In this way, it is as much about development and my own reaction to that development as about the houseless. I hope to force the semiotic meta-dialog of the houseless and the houses into a direct and pungent confrontation for the observer, as well as force the observer to question the uniformity that occurs on both sides.
“Pigs and poop” is about eating off another’s waste and is a phrase based on a story an informant told me in Berkeley, which will be elaborated upon at the exhibit. The content of the photos is what is most important to me– what each photo says about its subject and how each photo represents the houseless and the houses.
This was shot in NYC in a squat-turned-coop. I found it very interesting that this theme showed up a second time. Why the pig pooping? I feel it also says something about filth– about ‘being dirty.’ There’s also a saying: “Happy as a pig in poop.” Pigs actually don’t like to roll around in poop under ‘normal’ circumstances. If they had their choice between a cool clean lake and a pile of poop, they would cool off in the lake. However, when the lake is unavailable (like, in conditions that humans have set up for them– not the ‘natural’ condition), they will roll in poop. This is an interesting analogy to my subjects, who many would say are suffering from altered preferences. They only ‘choose’ to be homeless because they didn’t have any other options, just like the pig who can either roll in poop or overheat and die. I am skeptical of this view.
The entrance to ABC No Rio in the lower east side.
Backyard of ABC No Rio. That day, there were so many worms falling from the trees. They kept falling on me. Uck. A Puerto Rican punk band was playing inside.
A friend and an informant in NYC is peeking into a building on coney island where there used to be a freak show. I like this photo because it shows the exploratory nature of the subject. His clothing also reflects this. Unlike most of my informants, this guy did not do any drugs, nor did he drink. He just enjoyed train-hopping travel and wanted to experience different places before going to college. Notice the voodoo roll of sticks hanging above him.
Some of the photographs I took are noticably missing the head of the subject. The reason for this is the discomfort my subjects and I felt with creating such an identifiable image. As this project crosses boundaries between art and anthropology, concerns surrounding the rights of human subjects lingered in my mind. There I was as a researcher, but also as a photographer. Would the photography be considered a completely separate and solely artistic aspect of my project to my informants, as it had to the committee for the protection of human subjects? Or would it just be yet another form of exploitation and voyeuristic fetish. Although playing a part in the daily lives of the people I studied—being a person who not only interviews them, takes notes on them, and takes photographs of them, but also hangs out with, chats with, and shares cigarettes with them—did help to ease some of the exploitative tensions, they still played a part in my informants’ discomfort and my self-consciousness on undertaking the role of a researcher.
In order to further explore the possibility of creating a dialog between researcher and subject, I decided to give my subjects cameras. I didn’t know what they would photograph, I just wanted them to photograph anything they wanted to, and give them this tool of record-keeping and documentation which had begun to be so powerful to me. Perhaps they could be a voyeur and a photographer, also. I hoped it would create a dialog between what I, as researcher, saw and what they, as subjects, saw. How might the photos be framed differently? What would they see in them that I didn’t see? Would I be in them as part of their social landscape?
As soon as I picked up the first roll of film an informant took for me, I realized it was not about this dialog at all: it was first and foremost about access. I was so excited about that first roll of film that I did not realize I was keeping the photographer himself from viewing his own prints. I looked through them like a rabid dog to find any that might be aesthetically or analytically relevant. My informants took the photos, but I gave them the cameras and I got them developed, and, significantly, I kept the negatives. In truth, the vast majority of photos that were taken by the subjects were not useful for an exhibition. They were the blurry, finger-in-front-of-the-lens, posed snapshots of friends smiling into the camera, although most of the subjects posing were giving the camera the finger (which I see as relevant). But, perhaps the former has a relevance all its own…
But, as I said, these photos were mainly about access. I was able to see things they did and places they went when I wasn’t around. Here’s someone walking down the street in the city, their friend walking ten feet ahead. Here’s some graffitti of a frieght train I’ve never seen. Here’s what looks like an old abandoned office building, with a group of people sitting on couches and chairs. These latter two photos were taken in a squat in Brooklyn called the Bat Cave, a place I never had the opportunity to go to, and I had been warned against going there, anyway. Unlike the co-op ‘squats’ in manhattan, this was a structurally (and otherwise) dangerous abandoned building ridden with asbestos and soon to be torn down. I heard of someone getting raped there, and one girl I met had fallen off the second-story balcony, breaking many bones, including her jaw.
