3 p.m. // Caring starts with noticing and acknowledging those around you. This was a big theme of these walks — noticing and acknowledging people and details easily missed.
9 1/2 Street is often a backdrop for photo shoots. Girls change outfits in cars and shoot photo after photo that end up where? On Instagram? In fashion school portfolios? Headshot photographers arrange professionals in confident poses against brick walls in shots destined for LinkedIn. Recently the 2020 Census shot on location here using an athletic bearded white actor to portray a homeless person. These photographers are using this place as a stand-in for the generic idea of a gritty urban environment. Noticing my neighbors, the details of this place, noticing me, noticing actual homeless people is an inconvenient distraction on these kinds of projects.
At the same time, noticing too much can be unwelcome. Part of the draw of cities — and of nightlife districts in particular — is the illusion that it is possible to be lost and anonymous here, to go unnoticed. Crowds, music, darkness, and the unfamiliar grant us permission to experiment with trying on new selves, with release, with finding new people to be alone with, together with, or both. The camera and the scribe with his notebook shatter this illusion. What happens on U Street might not stay on U Street, or so the questioning looks of passers-by seemed to suggest. Then again, those who noticed the scribe were also acknowledging, taking a curious step forward, meeting halfway, towards caring.
One of 24 posts inspired by Half/Life, on view at H-Space in Washington, DC (on view indefinitely as of this posting). Contact Erik to schedule a visit. Paintings and zine on sale now in the Future Cartographic shop.