Homeward Bound
IT TAKES THICK SKIN AND A GENEROUS SPIRIT to appreciate the Museum of Street Culture. When I visited on a sunny April morning, I was on display to a group of homeless people who stared at me as I observed the art. The homeless sat on the sidewalk right in front of me, their backs slumped against the walls on which were mounted the photographs I was there to see. I felt the urge to look down and make eye contact, but resisted, afraid I wouldn't know what to do with the looks that would be returned. Instead, I stayed fixed on the photos — black-and-whites of homeless people — and considered how they mirrored the environment in which they were presented.
Several dozen homeless people milled about on Park Avenue, a depressed pocket in the quickly gentrifying southwest quadrant of downtown Dallas. On one side of the street is the Stewpot, a homeless resource center known nationally for its art program. On the other side is 508 Park, a partially restored Art Deco building where fabled blues musician Robert Johnson once recorded. The exterior walls of these two buildings are plastered with images by the renowned photographer Mary Ellen Mark as part of the museum’s inaugural exhibit, “Looking for Home: A Yearlong Focus on the Work of Mary Ellen Mark." It's centered on Erin Blackwell, or “Tiny,” a Seattle runaway whom Mark, directed by Mark’s husband, Martin Bell, with Tiny in attendance.
