"Adam or Eve?"
This is a visual critique of how homelessness in society is perceived. Almost 40 per cent of Canadians believe that people who are homeless are living on the street by choice, according to a poll conducted by the Salvation Army a few years ago. This project intends to challenge that belief.
I photographed two subjects eating an apple, one who was experiencing homelessness in downtown Toronto, and another who is a university student from a middle-class home.
On the left: Rachel Surman is a fourth-year Ryerson University student who grew up in Peterborough, Ontario. Her and her mother enjoy running half-marathons and are very close. She has worked at the National Post as an intern, and at a golf club during the summers to help fund her university tuition. She likes earl grey tea and country music.
On the right: Darrel Ness is a twenty five years old and was raised in Mantioba. He came from an ophanage run by Jehova Witnesses. He has never known his parents. Ness has a son who is five years old and lives in Barrie, Ontario, who he wishes he could see more. His favorite food is pizza and he loves the film Forrrest Gump.
Ness has been homeless since he was 16 years old.
What I wanted this project to question is some of the ideas we have sourrounding choice. A popular one is with the idea of biting the apple, and being doomed to a life of sin in the popular narrative of Adam and Eve. Did they have a real choice in the act? If so, who bit the apple first? Do those who live in poverty deserve that life because of their "poor choices?"
I found that I became less interested in finding answers to those questions during this study, and more interested in showing that perhaps, homelessness was never a real choice.
I found that I became less interested in finding answers to those questions during this study, and more interested in showing that perhaps, homelessness was never a real choice.
Thank you so much for your views.
Lindsay Fitzgerald
