TRAVERSE CITY — Alan Newton wants people to connect with the human being behind the label “homeless,” and hopes his photo exhibit will accomplish that.
Newton’s show, “The Other Traverse City 2025: Where Are They Now,” checks in on the subjects of his 2012 show, “The Other Traverse City” — a collection of portraits and stories of people experiencing homelessness in the area.
The City Opera House show will open Monday and run through Jan. 31 with an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Newton challenges the idea that homelessness is the result of moral failings. He said that sometimes it’s bad choices, but sometimes it’s bad luck. He hopes that revealing this part of themselves, along with his candid portraits, will make people more relatable. The people in the show have familiar hobbies, including poetry, photography, and genealogy. Many of them have families.
This is Newton’s sixth “Other Traverse City” show. In addition to the original show, he has covered topics of post traumatic stress disorder, opioids, vaping, and the COVID-19 pandemic to start community discussion.
One of the ways he uses his work to start conversation is by encouraging the viewer to consider the community’s relationship with homeless people.
He will have discussion prompts at the show and have visitors consider questions such as: “Is it better to invest in homeless shelters or housing solutions?” “How are tourism and homelessness related?” and “What could happen to funding with the new administration?
“Amongst the homeless community, the discussion right now is focused on the Pines,” Newton said, referencing the Eleventh Street encampment on the grounds of the former Traverse City State Hospital.
“When … we talked about this, what their biggest concern was … every single response was having to do with the Pines. What are people from the Pines going to do? Are they going to shut us down? Where will they go?”
The reunion
The motivation to revisit the people from the first show happened last March or April when Newton ran into one of the people he had photographed.
“We ended up sitting down that day and talking and he had a job, he was working, he was doing fine. And that started, ‘Well, what happened to the other people?’” said Newton.
Tracking everyone down was difficult and required independent sleuthing, he said.
“They’re a protective community, I mean, for good reason,” he said.
He also said that a lot of people had left, or the trail ran cold because of the pandemic. Of those he was able to find information on, some lives had changed for the better, some could not be found, and others had died.
Other major changes have impacted the homeless community since the original show, he said, including the spotlight on the issue and services available. In 2012, churches were rotating shelter work, which was a real challenge to those with mobility issues, he said. Now Safe Harbor has a dedicated shelter.
“One of the biggest changes is there’s dozens, literally dozens, of groups that are working in the homeless area — dozens,” Newton said.
Building trust
When Newton pitched the idea of the original show to former street outreach coordinator Ryan Hannon, he was mistrustful, Newton said. Hannon agreed to let Newton join the group for breakfast, but told him, “You can’t talk to anybody that’s homeless. You can’t initiate a conversation. You cannot take any photos.”
So Newton went to breakfast at Central Methodist Church every day and waited for people to come to him.
A couple of weeks later, he started getting some visitors. A couple of weeks after that, Anthony Ciccione, a man higher up in the community’s hierarchy, sat down to ask him what he was doing and Newton explained his idea.
A couple more weeks went by, and Ciccione came up to Newton, pointed around the room and said, “I told them all you were OK.”
“That opened the door for me,” Newton said, adding that being accepted into the community meant meeting people where they were at.
“They don’t want to be saved,” he said. “They want to be listened to, they want to be heard, they want a conversation.”
They began sharing their stories, their hopes for the future and, finally, their permission to be photographed.
Newton doesn’t want to tell visitors what sort of impression they should leave his exhibit with, he just hopes they will leave with a broader perspective.
“The reason I do this is to create conversations about issues we have,” he said. “Let people express their opinion.”