7 Days: 06 November - 12 November 2023
Soccer practice at a Public playing field in Golden Gate Park. San Francisco, CA. Photo: Robert Gumpert 10 November 2023
Shelter "tent" on the corner of Division Street and Potrero Avenue. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 06 November 2023
Photography
Blind: Miyako Ishiuchi Reveals the Scars of Humanity | by Marigold Warner
Museum der Moderne: The theatre photography of Ruth Walz
Vulture: Will Vogt Sees Rich People | by Christopher Bonanos
The Guardian: First to 21st: a woman and her son through the years | by Zoe Norfolk
Washington Post: Stories from the ‘dark underbelly’ of Australia’s long-term refugee prisons | photos: Mridula Amin; text by Rachel Pannett
Nonstndrd Creative: Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin Recent Photography 11/05/23
ProPublica: Here’s What Can Happen When Kids Age Out of Foster Care | by Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica, and Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico, photography by Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica
The Guardian: The world turned on its head: Taylor Wessing portrait prize winners | by Mee-Lai Stone
Huck: Watch an Exclusive Trailer for Upcoming Documentary Tish | by Isaac Muk; video by Modern Films
Huck: How Lee Miller Revolutionized the Role of Women in Photography | by Miss Rosen; Photos: Lee Miller
PhMuseum: A Guide to November 2023 Photography Festivals
Wallpaper: RIBA Photo Festival 2023 explores photography and the built environment | by Ellie Stathaki
Flashbak: Portraits Of US Army Truckers Arming The Soviets – 1943 - When the Allies seized Iran, they opened a corridor to supply weapons and more to the Soviet frontlines
The Picture Show - NPR: 8 portraits that capture the working class of Monterrey, Mexico, through its cantinas | by Zayrha Rodriguez
Daido Moriyama photo foundation: Gallery
The Guardian: Head On portrait award 2023 winners and finalists
Culture, Art and Design
Halloween toy abandoned on an 18th Street sidewalk in the lower Mission. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 11 November 2023
The Guardian: ‘What if women ruled the world?’ Judy Chicago’s latest show feels very timely | by Katy Hessel
Dezeen: Thomas Heatherwick selects 10 "humanised" buildings for Dezeen | by Tom Ravenscroft
Print: What SNL’s Bad Bunny Episode Can Teach Us About Cultural Relevance | by Ricardo Saca
Alta: San Francisco’s 24-Hour Diner Stops the Cosmic Clock | by Chris Colin
Museums Blog: ‘Return to Mingulay’: A Curator’s Perspective
PetaPixel: Hungary Fires Museum Director Over Photo Exhibit | by Matt Growcoot
Print: The Semiotics of a Movement: Picturing Life and Death | by Divya Mehra
El País: ‘I can’t wait to have you’: A historian discovers one hundred love letters sent to 18th-century French sailors | by Enrique Alpañés
Its Nice That: Unearthing the pioneering print designs of the all-women Folly Cove Collective | by Jenny Brewer
PetaPixel: Humane’s Wearable $699 AI Pin Has a Camera But No Screen | by Matt Growcott
Print: Tilting at Windmills: An Emerging Christian White Nationalist Symbol | by Olivia Trabysh
Other Stuff
Merry Go-Round, Golden Gate Park. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 10 November 2023.
Washington Post: Trump and allies plot revenge, Justice Department control in a second term | by Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett
Washington Post: Trump says on Univision he could weaponize FBI, DOJ against his enemies | by Maegan Vazquez
SF Chronicle: He was a small-town newspaper editor who took on Goliath and won | by Carl Nolte
Flashback: The CIA Rectal Tool Kit for Cold War Spies - And Former CIA Operative Explains How Spies Use Disguises | WIRED
Washington Post: Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream | by Drew Harwell
Washington Post: Oldest black hole found, and it may solve a cosmic mystery | by Joel Achenbach
The New Yorker: Reinventing the Dinosaur | by Rivka Galchen
International
The Guardian: Ireland’s criticism of Israel has made it an outlier in the EU. What lies behind it? | by Una Mullally
El País: After the Hamas war, what then?: The fate of Gaza sparks global concern | by Antonio Pita
Le Monde: Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and the future of Israel | by Jean-Pierre Filiu
The Express Tribune: Deportation pushing Pak-Afghan ties to the edge | by Kamran Yousaf
The Delacorte Review: In Limbo in Tbilisi | by Masha Udensiva-Brenner
Labor
The Guardian: One dead and four missing after British cargo ship sinks in North Sea | by Caroline Davies
LA Times: Chinese squid-fishing crews seek to escape beatings and more | reported and written by Ian Urbina, Joe Galvin, Maya Martin, Susan Ryan, Daniel Murphy and Austin Brush, with support from the Pulitzer Center. Photo/video: Ed Ou
Poynter: Opinion | We’re not ready for a major shift in visual journalism | by Tony Elkins
Committee to Protect Journalists: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
NY Times: Workers Making Clothes for Top Brands Reject a Proposal: $113 a Month | by Said Hasnat
Podcast
BBC Hard Talk: Carlo Rovelli: Life, the universe and white holes
A Small Voice: #217 Ben Smith talks with Max Pam
BBC Desert Island Discs: Henry Marsh interviewed by Kristy Young
Aeon Videos: Why cleaning up crime scenes requires a rare mix of grit and empathy
Books
Home security, surveillance on San Bruno Ave. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 11 November 2023
Washington Post: Sandra Newman had a ‘bonkers’ idea for how to end her version of ‘1984’ | by Sophia Nguyen
PhotoBook Journal: Rita Nannini – First Stop Last Stop | reviewed by Paul Anderson
El País: Benjamin: Beautiful, rebellious and radical - A new photo book explores the American underground musician and poet’s world through the lens of Michael Ackerman | by Gloria Crespo MacLennan
Aperture: Announcing the Winners of the 2023 PhotoBook Awards
Social Issues
Notice at a food bank and family resource center in the Lower Mission. San Francisco, California. Photo: Robert Gumpert 11 November 2023
Searchlight New Mexico: Two paths after foster care - Two teens aged out of New Mexico’s child welfare system last year. What made their lives so different?
| by Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica, and Ed Williams, Searchlight New Mexico
Knowable Magazine: What can we do about ultraprocessed foods? | by Alice Callahan
El País: As billions roll in to fight the US opioid epidemic, one county shows how recovery can work | by AP
NY Times: Behind the Gates of a Private World for Only the Wealthiest New Yorkers | by Eliza Shapiro
LA Times: Mexico doctors fill holes in California farmworker healthcare | by Melissa Gomez; Photos: Dania Maxwell
Wired: How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco | by Lauren Smiley
JSTOR Daily: Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation - “Except as punishment for a crime,” reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives. | by Ryan Moser
LA Times: Unsealed surveillance videos show violence against inmates inside L.A. County jails | by Keri Blakinger, Maria L. La Ganga
Division Street
SF Chronicle: ‘They just said we had to go’: S.F. clears homeless hot spots ahead of APEC 9 November 2023
Simon Holland, 35. 8 years homeless
San Bruno Avenue and Alameda Street, San Francisco.
Photo: Robert Gumpert 06 November 2023
What Does Home Mean To You? I hear it bounced around that home means where I lay my head at is my home. As great as that sounds I don’t know if I’m totally in agreement with it, although were ever I sleep at, that’s my home for the night. But really home is more a kind of community, it’s your family. It’s where you come to gather at night, hang together. I don’t have any of my family or friends here tonight, but usually they would be here and then it would feel like home. Right now if feels a little bit more like camping.
Is the City moving you around? Incessantly so. It’s gotten to the point I can never be setup for more than two or three days, anywhere, at any given time, or place. If I have a tidy camp, or a messy camp, or I’m the tiniest profile alone in a sleeping bag, I’m getting rolled up and offered the same exact one bed that’s open. They don’t have any other solutions. I’m working with a caseworker at the GA and CAAP office and they’re even frustrated by the lack of direction there. It’s so odd.
The City is supposed to give 72 hour notice of sweeps, is that your experience? No, no. Never. Not at all.
What does a tent mean to you? A tent is really everything. And it can be so flippant that it can go in an instant. I can get up and go to the bathroom, be gone for seven minutes, and have my entire campsite - tent, home, cleaned and cleared out - in just moments. So, you always got to be living with your guard up, your one eye open. But the tent really is everything, whether it’s built of an actual tent, or something more ramshackle put together with a tarp, cones, blankets, whatever. As long as you have some kind of blocker or barrier, some kind of privacy and protection, that’s everything out here. It’s so much better than laying on the street, or just in a sleeping bag, with no protection or shelter because you can be taken advantage of easier that way.
What is your most meaningful possession? At times it’s usually my cell phone although there are no possession that I’m ever able to keep, other than maybe my shoes, for more than a month at a time. And even my shoes maybe two or three months is the max. I mean I can’t keep anything. I love it when I have an ID on me but I can’t keep that. So I guess it would be a cell phone which I don’t even have one on me at this moment, but when I do that is my most meaningful possession.
Michael Benziger, 40. Two and half years homeless
San Bruno Avenue and Alameda Street. SF, California
Photo: Robert Gumpert, 07 November 2023
What does home mean to you? That’s a tough question. Home, I guess, is where you hang your hat, or you feel comfortable, where your loved ones are, where your stuff is. It’s just a place you can feel comfortable going back to, feel safe, and loved.
Has your idea of home changed in your time on the street? My perspective on a lot of things has changed. I don’t need a lot anymore. I came from a wealthy family and now I have an appreciation and a gratitude just for a tent, or the small things. So my perspective has changed, just having anything is a blessing in this world right now.
What does a tent mean to you? It means everything right now! Being on the street without something like a tent is really hard. It makes life impossible. You get stolen from. It puts you at risk, your possessions at risk. It’s uncomfortable, it’s scary. So something as small as a tent means the world to me.
What is your most important possession? Hmm, I was going to say like safety, I guess. I don’t know. Being on the street the last two years I’ve learned not to take much stock in possessions because they get taken, they get stolen, they get, you know, lost. So, material things, there not many material things I really care about much anymore. I don’t know, just myself, and say a tent and shoes. That’s a tough one. I don’t really have any material possessions anymore.
It’s nearly impossible to live in this environment on your own due to theft, and safety. It’s hard to live if you don’t have someone to watch your back. To stay with the tent and your stuff when you leave so it doesn’t get stolen. Or someone just to help you live. Help you make money, help you eat. You can’t do it on your own. You can, but it’s nearly impossible. So, having someone, I would call my “road dog”, that you live with that helps you through that stuff is like … actually that’s my greatest asset, having a friend you can trust and helps you get through things. That’s probably the greatest thing I have out here. I used to roll by myself for the first year and half because this is such a different environment from what I’m used to that I almost didn’t feel that I was part of it, or should be a part of it, so I rolled by myself a lot. But it was so hard, and so impossible. [Now] Me and him [Simon Holland], we get along well and it makes the world ten times easier.
Sweeps and the City It’s a double edged sword. I think San Francisco is amazing. They offer a lot of services, there are a lot of places that don’t offer nearly what they (the City) do. But recently they’ve been on a mission to - I don’t know what their deal is, clean things up or something - so lately we’ve had a lot of negative interactions with DPW and the police because they’re moving us around constantly. Everywhere we go it’s you got to move. Or you can’t be here. It’s like we don’t have a place in this world. Right now it feels like they want us to not exist.
I know they want us in a shelter but they come around and say there’s only one bed left. Ok, well there’s two of us. Are you going to leave one of us out here? Where’s the other one going to go, they won’t let us be anywhere.
I was told you get 72 hours notice to move but I’ve only gotten that once in countless times of being moved. I’ve lost everything multiple times. It was sort of my decision but you’re pressured into it. They’ll come in and wake you up at 6 in the morning and say you have a half hour to be out of here. Before I used to have carts full of stuff and it would be impossible to pack all that in half and hour, so I would get up and say I’m taking just my tent and bike and I’m out of here. I don’t have time to pack all that up. It’s gotten to the point that I just travel with a backpack and a bag. That’s where it’s gotten to because we’re moved so often that it’s not worth having anything.
See more, Read more
Order “Division Street - Dark was the night, cold was the ground”* Homelessness and Community”
from Dewi Lewis
Huck: Why We’ll Risk Becoming Criminals To Give Out Tents To Homeless People | by Streets Kitchen, Photos Dan Burton
SF Chronicle: How S.F. is dealing with its homeless encampments ahead of APEC summit | by J.D. Morris
Truthout: Media Blame Homelessness on Substance Abuse. The Data Tell a Different Story. | by Margot Kushel, MD
SF Public Press: SF Lacks Urgency to Prevent Overdose Deaths, Advocates Say | by Sylvie Sturm
See more of my photobook “Division Street”. Or see all the images and read all the stories by buying the book from Dewi Lewis
“Division Street” – Published by Dewi Lewis: Orders: U.S.A – Britain - Canada