For four years, Heather Milton handed out disposable cameras to people affected by homelessness in New Orleans and asked them to capture their world in pictures. After developing the photos, she recorded the photographer describing the image to her and what it meant. Now, these photos and their stories are on display at the Main Library, as part of a satellite exhibit for Prospect 5: Yesterday We Said Tomorrow.

The MyNew Orleans Photo Project Retrospective was coordinated by ReFOCUS, a nonprofit co-founded by Milton to develop photography projects that encourage diverse artists and audiences to better understand issues that divide communities. The project utilizes an advocacy method called photovoice, which empowers marginalized individuals to tell their own stories through images.

“When we hand out the cameras, we have a short meeting with the artists to talk about what the project’s all about, and we’d ask them to try to capture a couple of different things in their images,” Milton said. “One is what do you love about New Orleans and the other big one is what’s it like to be you?”  

The participants all are either currently unhoused or have experienced homelessness in the past. Their images are varied, which Milton said is the goal as homelessness does not always look how people who have never experienced it might think. Through the photovoice method, Milton said participants have a rare opportunity to communicate the realities of their everyday lives, particularly how they strategize about how to do everyday things while unhoused.  

“One of my favorite photos is of a faucet in an alley down in the Warehouse District. The woman who took it said that faucet was hugely important in her survival while she was unhoused,” Milton said. “She said, for years, she would wash her hair there, and she and her boyfriend would wash their clothes. To someone walking down the street, it’s just a spigot. But to these two people, it was a part of their survival.”  

Others raise issues of visibility, Milton said, pointing to a photo of Jax Brewery. Tucked in the bottom corner, almost obscured by shadow, is a tent and a person lying on the ground near it.  

“At first glance, it’s really easy to miss them, to not see them at all. The photographer said he was trying to capture the juxtaposition between the haves and the have-nots, but I think another important message is just how overlooked and often invisible this community is,” Milton said. “And, with this image, perhaps the photographer can influence their audience to consider how that must feel. To either always be unseen, or too visible.”