The Occupy Portraits: A Photo Essay

new haven, connecticut 27 January 2012 I arrived in New Haven via train, just as the final sunlight of the day was shifting to dark night - cold and fatigue beginning to take hold. I’d been up since 4:00 AM for the 5:30 portrait of retired police captain Ray Lewis, an activist now famous for being arrested while wear- ing his police captain uniform at an Occupy protest in New York. After a day of rushing on endless flights of subway stairs carrying a heavy backpack - New York to New Jersey for five hours of portraits in wind and rain, then back to New York to connect to a train to Connecti- cut - what I really wanted was a full night of sleep in a warm bed after a meal of anything other than the power bars I’d been living on. Seven trains, two taxis, and three photo shoots in one endless day. 

Upon my first steps into the park of Occupy tents, I was greeted by a man wearing a black suit he’d neatly painted with evenly spaced, bright white stripes. 

“Oc- cupy?” I asked, half praying he would say no. I sensed something out of the ordinary was taking place, having always been compelled photographically by the ordinary as extraordi- nary. He nodded yes, he is Occupy, dressed for the part of a best man in his deliberately funny suit. The groom - Occupy. The bride - Occupy as well. “Join us across the street for the reception. Everyone will be there all dressed up. You’ll get some great shots. No one will be at the camp tonight.” One of the last strongholds of tent encampments in the country, they are situated directly across from the dormitories of Yale University. I knew I should be happy for the couple - happy for the activists with a chance to come in from the cold to enjoy a much-deserved lavish party that included an open bar and a jazz singer hired just for the occasion.

Selfishly, all I could think of at that moment was how on earth would portraits of people dressed up in a nightclub merge with images from a campsite of the same group the morning after? And with everyone partying until 3:00 AM - when I was finally led to a tent loaned me by the bride and groom, who would even be awake in time to be photographed in the morning, before my train to the airport? At noon, I was to be on a flight bound for Occupy Oakland, whose historic weekend would end in brutality and violence and arrests by the time my plane would touch down at midnight.

 After a few hours of shivering in the borrowed sleep- ing bag my friend had guaranteed would be warm enough - a second round of the ‘Occupy cough’ settling further down into my lungs - I grabbed my camera, wrapped myself in the sleeping bag, and hoped for heat in the enclosed 10’x10’ Occupy Security shack. The activ- ist on duty for the night was awake just long enough to light a tiny heater, which was just strong enough to burn a hole through the borrowed synthetic sleeping bag I will now have to repair, if not replace. 

Morning light was never so welcome, and right away the slow portrait process of contact and connection began.