Stopping to talk to homeless people is not something most of us do. But Jon Linton does it all the time.
Linton, a book publisher who printed projects like the high-end Arizona art magazine ArtBook of the New West, has worked for years to photograph and share the stories of the homeless people he encounters. Today, his years of work will culminate in the opening of the I Have a Name exhibition at {9} the Gallery on Grand Avenue, and the publishing of an art book of the same name.
Linton’s project is driven by his desire to shine a light on homelessness, an issue clotted by misinformation and misunderstanding, and the real lives of people living in conditions of poverty he said.
“There are a lot of myths, a lot of things that need to be dispelled, and there are people who don’t seem to have much sympathy or empathy with the people I talk to,” Linton said. “The streets are the place that they end up calling home, sadly, but like you and I they’re people.”
Since early adulthood, Linton has gone out of his way to help homeless people, from small gestures like giving money or buying a lunch up to driving a hitchhiking man for three hours across New Mexico. His family and friends advised against his behavior, fearing that he was wasting his money or would put himself in danger, but he said he felt it was the right thing to do.
“I found myself doing things like that, against the wishes of family or a significant other,” Linton said. “I understand and I understood their concern and their urging me not to do those things. But I felt like it was something that felt right for me.”
In 2007, at the encouragement of an artist friend, Linton finally started work on an idea that he had been mulling over for years: a “photographic essay project documenting the plight of the homeless in a book form, a black and white coffee table piece.”
“I didn’t know how this thing was actually going to take shape,” Linton said. “And ironically, the very first person I talked to is exactly where it took shape.”
The first time Linton stopped someone, he asked for his name, a moment that inspired the title of his project.
“What happened next was that he started to weep, and I started to cry as well, and he said ‘you have no idea how long it’s been since somebody’s asked me who I am,’” Linton said.
Since that first encounter, Linton’s project has centered on the idea that a name represents the dignity of all people. Identifying a person with their name, Linton said, creates empathy and prevents the casual marginalization of people on the streets.
While working on the project, Linton said his insight into the lives of homeless people grew. This summer, he met a man who was wearing only socks walking on the hot pavement.
“I hadn’t thought about this until he made this very clear, but he said when you’re homeless your shoes become a commodity,” Linton said. “He said that while he was at a shelter his shoes had been taken off of his feet while he was asleep and he had been walking around the streets for three days in that kind of blistering heat.”
Linton gave his shoes to the man. He said the experience taught him that tackling homelessness will come from addressing a multitude of specific problems, like a lack of shoes. The causes of homelessness, like mental illness and drugs, are so widely misunderstood that it creates a negative perception of people who cannot help living on the street, Linton said.
In 2008, I Have a Name found a patron in Goldwater Bank, and Linton believed he had secured the finances to make art prints and the book he had planned. But after the economic downturn of the same year, funding was pulled.
It was not until last year that Linton began working on the project again and Allison Goldwater Arkin, Barry Goldwater’s granddaughter, discovered his work and provided pro bono legal assistance for the project. A recent crowdfunding effort provided over $6,500.
Linton created a Facebook page for I Have a Name and started posting in September. Since then, the page has amassed over 1,200 likes, and the top post with over 150 likes is a portrait and accompanying story of a man named Ron.
Laura Dragon, the owner and curator of {9} the Gallery, reached out to Linton to host his art after seeing his first few posts to the Facebook page. Linton said he was surprised to drawn Dragon’s attention so quickly, and when he asked about her motivation she revealed that she had been homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol for years.
“The lifestyle of the street becomes its own world for the people who live there,” Dragon said. “You cannot differentiate the true from the false at a certain point. And that became an absolute reality for me.”
Dragon said that most people who become homeless are locked in a daily struggle to survive, in conditions of extreme mental stress. She said that for a long period of time she survived on a diet breakfast bars and fast food chicken.
According to Dragon, indifference and a lack of accessible treatment condemn many homeless people to a situation that is nearly impossible to escape.
“Jails, institutions or death. That’s it. That’s what you’re looking for out there,” Dragon said. “They don’t offer you treatment. If you’re a drug addict or an alcoholic, we have one county-funded treatment center in Maricopa. One. There’s usually a two-week waiting list to get in. Most people in that situation don’t have two weeks.”
Dragon and Linton both believe that I Have a Name will stir the kind of empathy and attention that is required to genuinely help people who are homeless.
“I think that every individual, every one of us is a human being, and we’re pre-dispositioned to help one another, it’s just we get very busy in our lives,” Linton said.
“I don’t know if there’s an easy answer, but maybe it’s just to stop and pause.”
Following the Phoenix debut of the show at {9} the Gallery, I Have a Name will open in Scottsdale, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.
Contact the reporter at bkutzler@asu.edu
