SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – With record low temperatures for April tonight, there’s a group of people who may be more affected than most.
Photographer-artist Randy Bacon’s most recent project “The Road I Call Home” features 40 portraits of homeless people and their stories.
Some subjects were at the reception Friday night at Brick City Gallery and said nights with cold weather are nights they dread.
Bacon started this project 3 years ago traveling around the world taking pictures of the homeless.
He said this project changed his life.
“With 7.4 billion people, we actually are very much alike. We want to be loved, we want to love, we want to live a life with purpose, we want to have joy and peace, we want to make a difference,” said Bacon, “and that goes all the way across the spectrum including those individuals that don’t have this thing called a home.”
Bacon said the goal of this project is to bring awareness to the homeless community and convey one simple message.
“That we’re all people,” he said.
Bacon mentioned Donnis, a homeless person he shot on the very first day, nicknamed “Caveman.”
“He is one of the homeless street people back in the day when I was negatively judgemental, I was scared of,” said Bacon, “but after we started talking for thirty seconds, I’m like literally, I love this guy.”
Bacon said he also thinks a lot of us may take life for granted especially in cold temperatures.
“I remember David coming out of that tent, and he was obviously cold, I looked in the tent, and there was ice on his sleeping bag. Here is this person sleeping with literally ice on their outer shell,” said Bacon.
Joey Moreira was featured in the exhibit and said cold temperatures are one of the hardest parts of being homeless.
“Sometimes you really can’t prop a tent or a windbreak, to try to separate yourself from the rest of the city,” said Moreira, “so if you didn’t have enough blankets, you were very very cold.”
Bacon said a lot of people ask him what they can to do help.
“And my answer is, if nothing else, just say hello. Just say hello. It’s another very simple thing that maybe as average Americans we take for granted,” he said, “for a homeless person, they typically don’t even get that. So just to show that they’re there, that there’s some type of human connection, that goes a long way.”
Bacon will be giving a lecture at MSU’s Meyer Library auditorium on 4/9/2018.