Two Solitudes

After weeks without making pictures, I spent an afternoon playing with the 200mm and 50mm primes. This is one of the shots I kept. Taken from a moving car, this image of a panhandler at a busy intersection captures the ever-widening gap between rich and poor. In the context of last week's stock market meltdown and the US governments bail-out of AIG, it is a reminder that there is another, more basic economy (and ecology) at play in our cities. While the more fortunate among us watch the value of our portfolios plummet as the economic crisis widens, people such as this man (who lives in a tent by the side of the road) have already learned to live with little. Would our pride allow us to become mendicants were our personal fortunes to collapse? Would be, as Bob Dylan once remarked, "have to to get used to it?"