Jasons Story

I took this photo today at lunchtime. Not with any real thought that it would become my blip, but just as you do sometimes in the hope that something might click.

Jason is the figure sitting past the third pot plant, who I have blurred out a little. As i went to walk past to go buy some lunch he asked me if I was taking photos of the new Bridgeton Cross. I said I have taken a photo everyday this year. What followed was Jason opening up, for no reason he could understand to a stranger. He told me he had just been diagnosed with lead poisoning as a consequences of the bullets lodged inside him. He had been in and out of hospital for many other reasons and and he felt this was the final straw.

He walked with a stick. When you have a stick in Bridgeton it seems that the assumption by others is that you are a junkie and that morning he had been offered smack, df118s and valium. He just wanted to go home but didn't know how to tell his wife about his diagnosis and the treatment to come.

For my part as I listened I wondered whether I should ask him if I could take his portrait ( I was also being reassuring). He had despair all over his face and in that way it would have made a powerful blip. However it felt that the right thing to do was give him someone to talk to for a minute, shake his hand and walk on. Sometimes the camera just has to stay in the pocket.

This is the second time in 5 days that I have had an interesting conversation with a stranger as I was carrying my camera. Kind of makes it worth it.