Living Through Their Eyes, Jean Ferro Gives
Homeless People a Chance to Document Their Lives.   by Kit Roane

You may have missed them when they appeared on Century Cable last week, but unless your eyes have been closed, you have seen them on every off-ramp and alley in the city. It’s the homeless. And this time, they’re telling the story.

Ferro funded by a $5,000 grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, gave thirty-four individuals without homes $30 and a Kodak One-Shot camera. They could snap twenty-four pictures of the sidewalk if they wanted. Hey could trash the camera. Or they could document their lives.

“They absolutely loved the project. I got one 100% return and everybody shoed up on time,” says Ferro, who hopes that the project will show that the homeless are more than obedient figures to be pitied.

“I was curious to see how they saw their lives. They can’t just be miserable all the time just because they don’t have money. I haven’t had money many times and I wasn’t miserable.”

When Ferro first proposed the project, titled “People Without Homes,” it was a difficult sell. “What’s the book,” they would say,” she recalls. “You need more excitement.” But Ferro stood her original idea. “I was like ‘No, this is a slice of life. This is people.’ They always want another drama, and here were people expressing themselves. I wanted to stay very true to that, true to people’s emotions and their presentations. That’s what I did.”

The project has had a long ferment Ferro, whops began her career photographing musicians for record labels and now works freelance for such publications as Los Angeles magazine, says her interest in the homeless began more than twenty years ago, when she met a man walking across and abandoned filed with a shopping cart. “I went to take his photo,” she explains, “He threw up his hand at me and was very angry, like: “How dare you come into my life like that.” It made me stop and think. It made me realize, ‘Oh, yeah, how dare I do that.’ Ever since that day I have never had an attraction toward photographing people (who) seem underprivileged unless I could find a way to pay them or bring something into their lives--rather than me as a professional photographer taking some from them.”

The cultural affairs grant gave Ferro the opportunity to give something back. “Wow, what a wonderful thing to be able to give these people the opportunity to photograph themselves,” she says, adding that she now understands “the importance of expressing yourself and how you feel about life rather than other people putting labels on you.”

Ferro’s dedication and perspiration have paid off. Her video presentation of these pictures, People WIthout Homes, caresses more than chides. At times touching and often funny, it does not search for answers or present solutions From Hollywood street teens, to addicts in the alleys, each photograph tells a story and opens a window into the lives we know nothing about. Surprisingly, the common bond is not hopelessness but camaraderie.

“They always talked about ‘my friend,’” Ferro says of the video that documented the people involved in the project. “Lewis , an old loner who slept under bridges, would hold up a pictures and say “This is Frankie, I like Frankie.’ Or Ann, who lived in an alley downtown would point to how well her boyfriend came out in one of her pictures, or talk about her friend Debra,” Ferro recalls.

“There was a great deal of loyalty ... their love for each other, having friendship, having extended families beyond the ones they had as children. I cam away from there with this glow, a true feeling of people caring about each other. I was not afraid.”

Leaving the group was an emotional experience for Ferro. She undertook the project wanting to spread the joys of photography, but she left with something as well. “I remember the very last day. I gave them all a congratulatory note that I put in the back of their booklets saying ‘Congratulations, you have successfully completed this project with the artist Jean Ferro and the Cultural Affairs Department.” I wanted them to feel they were a part of the city and were doing something,” she explains. “Ann’s a real drug addict, a woman who’s got a lot of problems; she took that photo album and stuck it under her arm and she strutted across the street with her head high. God, that was great. When I came home, I couldn’t talk to anybody, I thought, ‘God the responsibility, they took this camera and honestly revealed themselves"