THE K***M***L

aThe core of my work is the class struggle. I was born in South Bend, IN andI was raised by a single mother. In South Bend exists two parallel worlds: one withhigh unemployment rates and poor schools, and the other with the legacy of thewealthy University of Notre Dame. My upbringing frustrated me. I witnessed theignorance of the privileged. The residents of South Bend were desperate. Yet in mycity, there was so much beauty. The beauty was in the eyes. It is what I have alwaysbelieved about artistic creative children in poverty: everything has been taken awaybut the face. And in their face is their story, in their soul, and it deserved to bepreserved. This is why I am photographer and a filmmaker. I started to become a preservationist when I dropped out of Berklee Collegeof Music. I went to look for others who were just like me and documentedthose I found on black and white film. I went to Juvenile Justice Prisons and tookportraits of the female prisoners. I went hitchhiking and ended up living in aPittsburgh homeless shelter for teenagers and documenting their lives. All of thepeople I photographed had been sacrificing their hopes and dreams in order tosurvive, something that the dreamers that grow up in South Bend, IN know too well.I moved to London and lived with Italian squatters that could not communicatewith me. It was in London that I noticed exactly what had been bothering me mywhole life in South Bend—it was what people did and what they sacrificed whenthey lived in poverty. The people I cherished, the subjects of my photos wereemotional, creative-- but broken down by their economic situation—a true injustice.My calling to is find as many of these people that I could, and document them. Mychosen form of documentation grew into filmmaking. It was important to me toarticulate that kind of pain in a beautiful way. I think of these people who havemade imprints on my heart as my found family—the family I’m trying to make.Silent movie stars, in a way, are unable to exist now—but they are filled with passion,like the people in my movies; they are calling upon a kind of Romanticism that isn’talive anymore in the media. Real love is the greatest act of rebellion you can give the world.