Aaron D. Neufeld- BLOG #9- ‘The Hobo Image’
Stepping off the NYC subway, at the Wall Street station, I bump into a beggar. She’s dressed poorly, and I’ve seen her wearing the same clothes day after day. I think to myself she must be homeless. She sings to herself as she wanders up and down Wall Street daily, providing directions to tourists, and asks those who pass by for a few bucks. Just around the corner are two seemingly homeless friends. They don’t wander but rather sit in their crappy clothes, holding cardboard signs asking for some money. The average person would assume they were all hobos; homeless people.
However, what gets us all thinking they are unfortunate hobos is solely their image. Do any of us ever stop to ask them how they got that way or what their past was like? It’s doubtful that any of us have. At least I haven’t. But after working on Wall Street this past summer, I was shocked to discover what you could learn if you did ask. I went out to lunch with a co-worker one day who informed me that he’d become friendly with the homeless woman I first mentioned over the past few years and that she was in fact not homeless at all. She lives in Staten Island and lost her job two years earlier. She spends her weekends job-hunting but because of her age and her professional field, finding a job in today’s economy is almost impossible. So meanwhile, she takes to the streets during the day, changing her image to that of a homeless woman, and forms her own salary. At the end of the month she can make a few hundred bucks!
It’s not a terrible idea for someone who is unemployed, and just changing the image, can change our opinion of someone. Take this situation and apply it to the reality and our view of photographs and it is quite interesting.
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