RON HENGGELER

August 4, 2021
A Tale of Two Cities: Homeless on the streets in San Francisco

Visitors to San Francisco return home with memories of its famous and iconic attractions.

For the past 25 years, the city has also become "famous" for its large homeless population. The number of people living on the streets has grown considerably since the Covid-19 pandemic began in March last year.

With deep respect, I have been photo-documenting the homeless for nearly four decades. My original inspiration for catching these images of the homeless, began years ago, when I discovered the photos of street people by Eugène Atget in 19th century Paris. Many, if not most of my photos, were taken while I was stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change. In the past year, the opportunity for capturing one of these stop-light images has become much more frequent, due to the fast and ever-growing number of people living on the streets.

. . .

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. "

Charles Dickens

 

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.

Maya Angelou

 

My home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars, I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.

Michel de Montaigne

 

 

 

 

Where thou art, that is home.

Emily Dickinson

 

 

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Jane Austen

 

 

 

 

A tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me!... Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

Hermann Hesse

 

 

Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.

Robert Montgomery

 

 

 

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

Winston Churchill

 

 

 

 

 

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.

Louisa May Alcott

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That experience of losing home, longing for home, that yearning for meaning and rootedness and identity in a floating world, it's what often makes an immigrant story into an American story.

Andrew Lam

 

 

 

There is no place more delightful than home.

Marcus Tillius Cicero

 

A house is made with walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

 

 

There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.

Rosalynn Carter

 

He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes...

Madeleine L'Engle

 

 

Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms.

William Bennett

 

 

 

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

Maya Angelou

 

 

 

 

I do not understand how anyone can live without one small place of enchantment to turn to.

 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

 

“Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.

 Pierce Brown

 

 

 

Home is where one starts from.

T. S. Eliot

 

 

 

The home should be the treasure chest of living.

Le Corbusier

 

 

People usually are the happiest at home.

William Shakespeare

 

 

 

There is a magic in that little world, home; it is a mystic circle that surrounds comforts and virtues never known beyond its hallowed limits. 

Robert Southey

 

 

 

 

 

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.  

John Howard Payne

 

 

 

Peace, that was the other name for home.

 Kathleen Norris

 

 

 

 

Home is where the heart is.

Pliny the Elder

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Jane Austen

 

 

 

 

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

Charles Dickens

 

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance

 

 

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