Diamond Settles, Halloween, South Bronx H.E.L.P. Shelter, New York, USA, 1993
(catalog number 219J-630-003)
MARIA CUOMO COLE and Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, at the H.E.L.P. organization, commissioned me in 1993 to photograph the people who lived in the several H.E.L.P. shelters scattered around the New York area. I spent the entire summer and part of the fall photographing this project.
What is so special about the H.E.L.P. shelters is that each family is given a private apartment. The apartments surround an area of grass where children can play. In other shelters, people often have to sleep in one room with cots side by side. There is no privacy. Because of this, many people lose their sense of dignity, as well as their sense of family.
There have been many photographs of people in shelters. I was looking for a new way to photograph this subject. I decided to photograph life in the shelters through the eyes of children. After working with the Damm family, I had a strong interest in how homelessness affects children.
The majority of the photographs were taken with my 4 x 5 camera. I wanted the photographs to be about the details in the lives of children. I wanted to make portraits of them in their environment with their possessions. When a child has such an impermanent life, his or her few possessions take on a particular importance.
I knew that Halloween would be a wonderful event to photograph in the shelter. At Halloween I could see the children's sense of fantasy and imagination in their very inventive costumes.
Since Diamond Settles was so young, her mother picked her costume. She dressed her as a mermaid. When she took Diamond over to the shelter's Halloween party, the girl was terrified by the ghosts, witches, and other costumes. She had a terrible temper tantrum at the party, and her mother had to carry the screaming mermaid back to their apartment. She put her in the bathroom to calm down. This photograph is of Diamond recovering from her Halloween ordeal.