SUITCASE JOE GOES WELL BELOW THE SURFACE OF HOMELESSNESS TO CAPTURE THE MOST STRIKING AND INTRIGUING IMAGES AND STORIES
Interview by Julian Lucas
Photography Suitcase Joe
With about many people living in Los Angeles County without a home, it makes many people wonder what solutions there are to solve this state of emergency.
Skid Row, a district within the city of Los Angeles, is home to around 4,757 people living in homelessness, according to the 2019 census, an 11 per cent increase from the previous year. This can be described as the population accounts for approximately 13 per cent of the 36,135 homeless within the city limits. The county has almost 59,000 homeless people.
Suitcase Joe, an anonymous street photographer who has been documenting and telling the stories of the Skid Row community. For the last 5 years, Suitcase Joe has spent countless hours meeting the residents of Skid Row Street to learn their stories so that he could share them with the outside world. “My mission is to re-humanize the wonderful people who make up Skid Row and give them a platform to be heard by all”. Suitcase Joe feels it is easier to help people and to take care of them if you have a better understanding of where they're coming from.
“I was floating off the ground from all the electricity running through me, then it blasted me right out the window, forty feet through the air, all the way to the sidewalk on the other side of the street. When I woke up I smelled something burning. Then I realized it was me. I was on fire!” Cricket recounts his story of how he earned his scars. He tells me he used to be a “fence jumper”, going into old buildings and pulling copper to sell. He went into a master room in an abandoned warehouse and grabbed a big ground wire while holding his wrench. “There was so much electricity in there, that the room was humming. You could just feel it. Next thing I know I’m floating off the ground and seeing neon green. Then my eyes flashed twice and I was out.” After being blasted out the window and catching on fire, he woke up again, long enough to try and put himself out, and then passed back out. Two months later he woke up in a hospital bed. He tells me the entire time he was in a coma he was having one long dream where doctors performed experiments on him, but he was still in Skid Row. Cricket lives in Skid Row currently, but he’s not a fence jumper anymore. Now he sells and trades goods on the streets like bikes and clothes. As he says, far less dangerous pursuits.
The woman on the left brought news that a man around the corner known as New York had just passed away in his tent. That’s how word travels in Skid Row. Fortunately it wasn’t anyone that Tiffany knew. Tiffany (photo right) is a heroin addict. While I was speaking with her, I noticed blood on her shirt and a bloody cloth wrapped around her arm that served as a crude bandage. She tells me, two years ago a couple of abscess’ formed on her arm caused by shooting up and they quickly became infected. The infection continued to grow and spread throughout her entire arm. From my observation her arm cannot be far off from needing to be amputated. However, the state of her arm does not keep her from continuing to use. Addiction is more powerful than some people understand. It’s not as easy as just getting clean and starting over. It’s something you will always have to deal with once it rears its ugly head into your life.
It’s a little after 8 a.m in Skid Row and the streets are coming to life. Here a man shoots up in his neck while smoking a blunt. Not long before this photo was taken, a man across the street was ODing from an unidentified drug. I called 911 while a woman who had rushed to the scene, performed CPR on the man. She had an OD kit with her too, which is something I had never seen before. Medics were quick to arrive and take over. I did not get a chance to speak with the woman afterwards, who returned to work as fast as she had arrived to help out. People OD everyday in Skid Row. It’s a sad reality of what’s happening down here and it’s all too common to see if you’re here everyday. I don’t know if the man survived. Sadly, it’s just another day in Skid Row
A woman with presumably mental health issues running naked through the streets of Skid Row while paramedics do what they can to try and pick her up.
Diamond, seen here putting on makeup, is a very artistic woman. She lives on the sidewalk of a garment factory business where she has built an elaborate two room shack. The ceilings are draped with an assortment of scarf like fabrics and inside she burns fires in a grill at night to keep warm. There is even a queen size mattress and sofa inside. Because her dwelling is on the sidewalk of a business that lets her live there, she’s not subjected to street cleaning and she’s built something a little more long term than the tents you normally see in Skid Row. She was addicted to crack cocaine for many years, and before that she was a model. She tells me she does a little work for a few of the local businesses now, and that helps her get by.
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Julian Lucas, is fine art photographer, photojournalist, and creative strategist. Julian also works as a housing specialist which, includes linking homeless veterans to housing. Julian has lived in Chicago, Inglewood, Portland, and the suburbs of Los Angeles County including Pomona.