A project that started from one thought

“I asked myself what it must be like to be homeless... How can I get images from them and not of them?... I would love to let them be the photographer and allow us unprecedented access to their minds.”

William Edwards

That thought has turned into a nationwide collaboration between William Edwards, Courtyard Publishing and hundreds of homeless from around the country. William Edwards has ingeniously crafted disposable cameras that contain the correct postage and return address on them, so that all someone has to do is drop the camera into a mailbox. William has been traveling around the country working with different homeless shelters, rescue missions, police officers, and other civic organizations handing out cameras and living with different homeless populations.

Posted below is one of Williams diary entries detailing his experiences:

“More Cameras!”
We ran out of cameras! Last week after my trip to Pennsylvania we realized that we had already blown through 250 cameras. Finding these cheapo wedding cameras in bulk isn’t that easy so it has taken me a few days to find another source (my first source disappeared).

This time I found a dealer that has several hundred new FUJI cameras with a 1000 ISO film speed. This is great for two reasons. Reason one is that having a faster film speed should make the pictures stand out more and should make them significantly more crisp (better color too). The second reason is that I no longer have to have TSA security hand check every camera that I bring back. The carry on x-ray machines are powerful enough to kill a camera that has undeveloped film. The new faster 1000 speed film is immune to this problem.

I will tell you that I have made many TSA friends as I try to explain why I am carrying 20 trashed disposable cameras in my carry-on bag that I want to have hand checked. I’m pretty certain that I’m on the TSA watch list now... ("Look out for Hispanic homeless looking guy with lots of cameras") Hopefully; we should get the cameras tomorrow (Wed) as we already have 60 of them spoken for.

Chicago is the next trip I am booking. Looks like July 9th. I have a friend there so it should be much easier to get some good information than asking strangers at the Nathan's hot dog stand at the Airport.

Washington DC is coming up at the end of July or beginning of August. I will be traveling with a Miami Detective who has family there. He is 6'2" 240 lbs and very intimidating. This will make it much safer to get into the seedy parts of DC (of which there are many).

There will certainly be a trip later this month to some random city. If anyone has any requests please let me know. Especially if you know someone there that can give me some pointers (especially police friends).

The two last big trips are Alaska and Hawaii. Alaska will be in the middle to end of September (based on tips from others) and Hawaii will be whenever I feel like getting away from all of you (probably October or so). Part of the Alaska trip will be a North West stop or two. I will certainly be stopping in Oregon and I will pick one or two more nondescript cities either in Washington or Idaho. Maybe a short road trip then fly up to Alaska from there.

The Hawaii trip will also include one or two west coast cities. I was thinking San Francisco or Phoenix AZ or maybe Vegas (I really don’t like Vegas). Maybe I’ll just do a hop in Albuquerque NM or somewhere in Utah.

The rest of the year will just be random trips to random places. There are a few that I certainly would like to hit such as Detroit, Memphis (or Nashville), somewhere in Kansas and someplace a little nuts like Fargo ND.

Thank You

As with any huge undertaking a project of this magnitude would never be accomplished if it did not have considerable help and guidance along the way.  We would like to thank the following people and organizations for all of their help and guidance during this miraculous journey.

Susan Anderson - Bakersfield, CA
Detective William R. Cook - Miami, FL
Officer Todd Edwards - Polk County, FL
Jerald Brown, Ph.D. - Miami, FL
Lieutenant Brent Oberholtzer - Downtown Lancaster, PA
Our Friends at Walgreens & Co.:
Will Mantecon, District Photo Supervisor
Khaled Janania, Store Manager
Danny Chirinos