The first picture of homelessness I took whilst I was still living in Ireland and contemplating the possibility of leaving a troubled home. A fact I didnt realise at the time, is the fate of so many younger homeless people accross the world, trouble at home, lack of identity and the isolation of a destructive relationship. With exception to Japan where I encountered street people who were there because they did not want to affect their family honour.

< Chris I met about 1994, he was a heroin addict back from London where he had spent about ten years trying his luck on building sites and the usual rounds of day labour jobs. The eventuality of succumbing to an unrelenting life of alcohol to ease the days when nobody wanted him led to a life of poverty and begging on the streets for food and transport costs. Eventually heroin found him and his only purpose became getting his next fix.

In and out of prison for petty crimes he was eventually repatriated to Mount Joy prison in Dublin where he stayed for less then a year and due to cut-backs and over-crowding was released into a drug rehabilitation program. I met him when he was recovering and on Methodone, sick and incapable. He lived in a car which someone had abandoned and (ironically) left in an alleyway behind government buildings.

I was on assignment one afternoon and I happened accross him and a few of his buddies drinking Champaign in his car which he had pilfered from a reception for the premier of India. The scene of five scraggy stinking homeless guys in a beat-up car living it up on a few €60 bottles of Champaign was just incedable. I didnt take any pictures, but I did get to know five men who would over the course of the next couple of years be very close to my photographic eye and for Chris, in my heart and mind.

This image was taken shortly before I left Ireland and when Chris had finally secured a house and had been allowed to see his son for the first time in nine years.

New York, Chicago, Austen, Huston, Seattle and LA struck me as the most disgraceful places for their sheer lack of care or interest in those that litter every street in their respective downtown areas. Other Cities dont escape that easily but places like Boston do atleast have programs running.

A guy on the street just outside the IBM tower in downtown Chicago told me that if you are not on the street physically then the police cant arrest you. I saw plenty of homeless folks sitting on milk crates or lying over walls.

<Pat. I met Pat around 1991 shortly after I finished school and was attending college. He hung around the bus stop where we gathered in the mornings and evenings on our dau=ily commute. There was a soup kitchen nearby, run by voluneer lay people of some catholic organisation.

"I left because I had no money and no job and no future. I left like everone else did." We are talking early eighties Ireland, when everyone was leaving on the ferry accross the irish Sea to a feint glimmer of hope. Through the seventies life both in the UK and Ireland was harsh. The situation in Northern Ireland didnt help matters and it made life for the Irish in the UK even harder. At the time, any association to being Irish was usually followed with whats now known as hate crimes, discrimination and harrassment.

Those that didnt make it came back and ended up poor or on the streets, " I came back and I didnt have anything, not a penny. I have a brother in Cork and he sends me money, he doesnt know where I live, so I get it at the shelter" -similar theme with the japanese homeless I met in Osaka in 1997.

<2006 Seattle Pioneer Square. I dont know her name but she looks like an Angela to me. I met her as she was collecting soda and beer cans on the street. Her and this bloke were sprinting down the street with huge black plastic sacks like summertime Santa Clauses packed to the brim with empty and crushed cans. A match had just taken place so there were crowds around and lots of cans! She told me that for a certain weight value, there is a cash refund on cans and that she and her friend collected as many as they could and sometimes they could make seventeen or eighteen dollars for a few sackloads.

She was a really fantastic person with an infectious smile.