I used to live in San Francisco where there is a huge homeless population. I often found myself thinking that I'd really like to learn about some of their stories; about how they ended up homeless. And of course as a photographer interested in people, I thought it'd be great to make some portraits if anyone was open to it. So one day I picked up my camera and got started. I didn't know what to expect at first. Sometimes the camera scares people away, so I'd usually start off with it tucked away in my bag, and would explain that I was a photographer interested in the stories of the homeless. Most people were super nice and receptive and relished the opportunity to have someone listen to them. After listening for a while, most people were in a pretty good mood and I would ask them if they wanted me to take a few shots of them. If they were interested, the only thing I would ask of them would be to look at the camera while I was shooting. I picked up that technique from Milton Rogovin in his book The Forgotten Ones. So that's how I got the posed sort of feel.

I ended up spending several months going out to places where I knew homeless people hung out, and eventually became friendly with a few of the folks. One of the most rewarding parts of this project has been giving the subject a copy of their portrait. I wasn't always able to find them all, but most of them I did and it really brightened their day. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job of documenting their stories, and I wish that I would have. As you can imagine, most of them were very sad stories.

By the way, not all of the photos were taken in SF. I relocated to central New Jersey recently and continued the project in Trenton.

I'm still not sure exactly what I am going to do with these images. I'm currently living in Philadelphia and there are homeless people everywhere. I haven't gotten out here yet with my camera and ears, but I may.

-Bob