The Y2K Problem

A Bridge to the 21st Century

First, let me tell you about an unexpected phone call I got from Time magazine; unexpected for two reasons: Not only had I long since shelved my cameras, but I never thought I’d hear from them after my last stint, walking back into the downtown San Francisco office, cameras and lenses still hanging all over me, to tell my editor I couldn’t finish the assignment I’d just been sent to shoot half an hour earlier and only steps away.

I was supposed to be illustrating a story about homelessness, always a perplexing issue politically, and a persistent hum of empathetic anxiety, like emotional tinnitus. In 1996, it was once again headline news, with a recurring increase of urban encampments and a corresponding decline of social tolerance.

The first potential subject I approached sat cross-legged on the sidewalk next to his plastic-bagged belongings, and backed against the concrete foundation of an office building. A small dog lay curled in his lap. Indifferent pedestrians passed him by, maybe willfully. His weathered face belied the likelihood of his youth: maybe late teens, early twenties. Looking up, he implored me not to take his picture, and with disarming sincerity explained that he didn’t want his family to see him like this. I understood him to mean not only now but, once preserved on film, he would be “like this”…