Maggie is a photographer with an extraordinary eye for details, colors, shadows, and wonder. She is approximately thirty years old and optimistic about America, its future, its healing, its complex cultural contradictions, and its often ignored people-unifying characteristics as a nation.
Maggie is also homeless in San Diego, has been for the several years I've known her. Although she does create surrealistic phantasms, her photographer's gaze is often realistic, with a dash of humor, irony, and impressions that reflect a phrase I recently coined in 2023 for her work and similar works by homeless artists: "the satirical homeless gaze."
Image reproduced with Maggie's permission:
She also uses her creative eye to design patterned hats out of yarn. She is looking for a possible concession spot in a small boutique, once she has a collection of hats to sells.She sells a few on the daily in the winter, but it's not much money. She gets by with help from our local shelters and by trading small jobs for items she needs. She relies on her phone as a survival tool.
When her government issue cell phone was stolen a few months ago, Maggie endured a long process to get another. Last time I checked, I saw only a few pay phones scattered around San Diego, and those were barely functional. Many homeless state that they are targeted for their phones when they sleep in solitary sidewalk spaces and are sometimes beaten when they wake up and defend themselves. That's why many homeless people, male and female, sleep in encampments with others they can trust . . . the numbers help when neighbors are trustworthy.
For many children, runaway "invisible" youths, women, disabled, elderly vulnerable homeless, the abuse can be deadlier. Maggie avoids deep conversations about homeless abuse and violence. She chooses to see all people in a positive light.
I met Maggie during an early morning stroll about seven years ago, At the time, she was traveling the country, taking photos, talking to people, trying to get a sense of who she was and where she fit in America's changing 21st century artistic terrain. Many of us forget that our nation was definitely morphing into a different national cultural/artistic movement towards self expression within the concept of "We" as a people.
Maggie had a romantic notion of a traveling America to find adventure at that time. She was able to get odd jobs until productive full time jobs dried up. Then, COVID 19 with rampant infections, screaming ambulances, and grief stricken loss turned her world topsy-turvy for the last few years. Her photographs had a Carrie Mae Weems photographic sense blended .https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carrie-Mae-Weems .Maggie has a storehouse of fascinating, insightful narratives about life on the streets before, during, and after the pandemic. Narratives infuse her hats and her photos with a journalistic Gwendolyn Bennett essence.https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gwendolyn-Bennett They still do
However, Maggie's artistic gaze and our sidewalk conversations have become more . . . nuanced with hauntological hints of shadow as we talk about San Diego's post COVID 19 homeless life on streets. Men and women live different lives yet occupy the same physical spaces. No hard current statistics expose the number of women raped and otherwise assaulted on San Diego's streets. It is hard for all women to survive on the streets of our poorest of the poor, our homeless, with an urban population split is not just Democrat or Republican.
It's more primal, stark--- those who live inside even if it is in a sidewalk tent juxtaposed with those who live openly outside under San Diego skies on sidewalks, in bushes, in doorways. This portion of our population is a mixtape of layered political views.
And Maggie? She is one of those rare critically thinking political moderates homeless, aware of complex homelessness issues beyond scapegoating and political footballing. One of San Diego's artist homeless who lives daily inside or out on the streets.
Image reproduced with Maggie's permission:
Thank you "Maggie" for allowing me to share this glimpse of your life.
delores fisher
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