When I woke up that morning, the last thing I had in mind was a trip downtown to join half a million people in protesting Donald Trump's inauguration. "Not my president!", they were saying. Yes, like it or not, he was.
I'm not a protest kind of guy. So why bother? Then it occurred to me. People. There will be a sea of people down there. I can bring my new camera and capture their passion. It would be a fertile source of inspiration.
Anyone that's ever tried street photography knows the challenge of finding scenarios that are interesting to shoot and feeling comfortable enough to lift up the camera and start documenting. Fear of confrontation, fear of getting to know people, fear of getting caught 'stealing' a shot. So the idea of going someplace where they'll be an endless supply of willing subjects suddenly excited me.
I knew I couldn't drive to the rally because parking would be impossible. So I decided to drive to the North Hollywood Metro station and hop a train. "Surely this will not be difficult," I persuaded myself. I was wrong. The first sign that there was going to be a problem was when had to park almost a mile from the Metro station. No problem, I thought. It's worth the walk.
As I followed the crowd and approached the entrance to the subway, I saw even more people coming up the escalator than going down.
Everybody told the same story. There was no way to get downtown. Not by Metro anyway. "But this is an origin station," I said. "This is the beginning of the line." Although it was the beginning of the Red Line to downtown, people were getting on the Northbound Red Line as far south as Hollywood and staying on the train, waiting for it to turn around and go downtown. So all the trains were arriving full. What to do? Should I go home? Should I call it quits?
Then I realized that a spontaneous protest was forming around the train station entrance.
All the people who couldn't get downtown (and didn't want to walk there) were hanging out at the station. People with signs, people in costumes.
So I decided to embrace it. I took out my camera and started shooting. After about 200 shots, I took a break and I realized I was standing right next to someone else with a camera. Her name was Amy.
We talked about our situation and how we were just going to have to settle for being up here in North Hollywood instead of downtown. Her mission was the same. Photograph the people.
We chatted for a while and really hit it off. Then she alerted me to the fact that her girlfriend Presence was going to be picking her up and dropping her off at the rally downtown. And Amy insisted on bringing me with her. "I'm kidnapping you," she said.
About 45 minutes later Presence showed up and we hopped into the car. We had to stop at Amy's apartment to pick up some equipment and get some food.
While we were there, Presence took her dog Lakshmi for a walk. Lakshmi was very sick and had been for a couple of years. They told me she was living on borrowed time. So I felt the urgency of capturing a great photograph of the two of them. I went with them on their walk and took this picture.
As we were finishing the walk, Presence and I encountered a neighbor who also had a very sick dog. Presence, who is a Reiki practitioner, offered healing energy to help the neighbor's dog.
Then it was back in the car, and we were off. The trip downtown took just under an hour.
From the time we got out of the car to the time we left, I don't think I stopped shooting, except to move around and at one point stop and listen to Jackson Browne play. I took over a thousand pictures that day.
I suppose my form of protest, if you can call it that, is to engage in art. It's more an act of love.
“The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.” - Andrei Tarkovsky
The miracle of that day, besides having the privilege of taking pictures of all these beautiful, passionate people, was making two new friends.
