Capturing Communities in Words and Images:

Tag: private homeless shelter

Getting Closer to the Dwelling Place

I spent part of my Thanksgiving with the women, staff and volunteers of the Dwelling Place. Being there and sharing this holiday with them gave me a better sense of this community. The women who live at the shelter and those that came for the Thanksgiving dinner all shared their stories with each other and with me.

This community of women that come togther every week respect, care and give each other stength to meet their challenges.

In order to understand their struggle, I decided to focus on a couple of the women. I interviewed “Dorca” last week. She shared with me some of her painful adolescense, drug abuse and her everntual diagnosis with mental illness which led to her being homeles. “Dorca” spent much of the last 15 years going in and out of hospitals while she struggled with her mental illness. There is a lot more of her story that I would like to capture and for this I have asked her to take me to her old neighborhood on the Lower Eastside so that I can take picutres of her visiting where she used to live…

I will be going to the shelter tonight and hope to be able to take picutres. This has been the most challenging part of the proeject. I need to figure out a way to captute this community in images.

Moving towards pictures at The Dwelling Place

I have been to The Dwelling Place three times and have yet to take any pictures of the shelter or the women. However, on my most recent visit to the residence, after I served the women their dinner, I sat at one of the tables to chat with some of them.

This was the single best thing I have done during my time there. Usually, I just stand off to the side after I have finished serving them and watch as the women are eating without interacting with them. This has been an error on my part.

As I sat at the table I began to talk to “Dorca,” she was very talkative and was in good spirits. She began to tell me how lucky she was to have found the nuns and this shelter because she had heard all the bad things that happen in the city run shelters and was afraid to go there.

We ended up talking about a variety of topics such as music, Puerto Rico (she is Puertorican), her family and what she does to stay positive. I knew though, that if I wanted to really know “Dorca” I would need to have a lot more than half an hour with her.

She asked me if I was a volunteer at the shelter. I told her that I was yet also had another purpose. I proceeded to tell her about the Feit Seminar Class and my work so far. She was curious and interested to know more.

I asked her if she would like to meet with me outside of the shelter so that we could have more time to talk. She agreed and we are meeting this coming Wednesday Nov. 26. I am very excited and hope that I can really get to know her story. I will prepare some preliminary questions to ask her in order to get us started with a conversation – though I have every intention to just let the conversation flow and see where it takes us. I will also take some pictures of her and see if she is comfortable with this as well.

Sister Margaret called me yesterday and asked me if I would be willing to volunteer for Thanksgiving Day to help set -up and serve the meal to the ladies. I agreed and hope this will be a good opportunity to take pictures!

On my next posting I hope to post some images! Let’s see….