Michael O'Brien got out of his car one day in 1975 and sought the acquaintance of a man named John Madden who lived under an overpass. Their initial contact grew into a friendship that O'Brien chronicled for the Miami News, where he began his career as a staff photographer. O'Brien's photo essays conveyed empathy for the homeless and the disenfranchised and won two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. In 2006, O'Brien reconnected with the issue of homelessness and learned the problem has grown exponentially since the 1970s, with as many as 3.5 million adults and children in America experiencing homelessness at some point in any given year. In Hard Ground, O'Brien joins with renowned singer-songwriter Tom Waits, described by the New York Times as "the poet of outcasts," to create a portrait of homelessness that impels us to look into the eyes of people who live "on the hard ground" and recognize our common humanity. For Waits, who has spent decades writing about outsiders, this subject is familiar territory. Combining their formidable talents in photography and poetry, O'Brien and Waits have crafted a work in the spirit of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, in which James Agee's text and Walker Evans's photographs were "coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative" elements. Letting words and images communicate on their own terms, rather than merely illustrate each other, Hard Ground transcends documentary and presents independent, yet powerfully complementary views of the trials of homelessness and the resilience of people who survive on the streets.
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"...this is a powerful book..." Guardian 10 June 2011 "Other collections of lost souls (Richard Avedon's In the American West comes to mind) are different... We meet O'Brien's people one on one. Their 'otherness' is removed. The photographs engender compassion and empathy. If that sounds simple, it is because it is simple. And, as you know, being simple is very, very difficult. Hard Ground is a rare and powerful book." JOHN LOENGARD Life magazine photographer and picture editor, and one of American Photo magazine's "100 most influential people in photography" "If I can think of a book to relate to this one, it would be James Agee and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. That book was photographed in 1936--during the Great Depression--and published in 1941. It had an enormous influence--and still does--on the way photography and writing can work together as a catalyst for social change... I think Hard Ground has this potential." MARY ELLEN MARK internationally renowned photographer and author of sixteen books, including Seen Behind the Scene, Exposure, and Twins
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I purchased this as someone who likes photography, and as a Tom Waits fan. I'm afraid to say that the book dissapoints on both levels. I was expecting the photography to be as good as the picture on the cover all the way through the book, but the fact is that it isn't. There are one or two stand-out pictures, but on the whole they are (in my opinion, and I know it's very subjective) not that impressive. Similarly, the contribution from the great Tom Waits isn't the lyrical feast I was hoping for. It is basically a very expensive coffee table book which falls short on the content.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The photography is excellent however Tom Waits was a bit light on the ground with his input in my opinion, but it was a gift for the mother in-law who loved it as she is a big fan of Tom Waits and homeless people, well maybe not a fan but the photos are excellent.
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Photography book in etched black and white films, depicting the gnarled faces of those with deeply lined pained visages. Each details the flipside to the quest for a particular elusive dream = to survive.
Unremittingly scared furrows creased within lines of stress, filled with too many beatings, overloaded with racket feelings and battling with flows of trauma filling up an acidic long yard stare. Everyone is human, more than human in illuminating another world, light years away from the gloss and froth broadcast in the sanitary gloss adobe magazines.
Interspersed are the equivalent of haiku poems placed at specific junctures to illuminate the nihilistic nothingness stirring around the misplaced lives of those left out of being excluded. However they also bring out a sense of surreal lived lives. Because within the song are those hard won moments. Those left out of the big picture traverse the kitsch and cultural froth of the world composed by admen. The deliver a resounding "no" to the life battery, the vestiges of the pomp are paraded within.
One problem - the pictures appear studio cuts, with everyone placed against a blank wall. It would have been more real to see the wider environments. I am sure not everyone lives in a Friends/Sex in the City/Manhattan apartment.
Adds something to the American Way of Life as it exposes the lies, deceit, propaganda and disdain carried within the normal lifestyle. Something they take great pains to hide away from as the God of mass consumption drools.
Unremittingly scared furrows creased within lines of stress, filled with too many beatings, overloaded with racket feelings and battling with flows of trauma filling up an acidic long yard stare. Everyone is human, more than human in illuminating another world, light years away from the gloss and froth broadcast in the sanitary gloss adobe magazines.
Interspersed are the equivalent of haiku poems placed at specific junctures to illuminate the nihilistic nothingness stirring around the misplaced lives of those left out of being excluded. However they also bring out a sense of surreal lived lives. Because within the song are those hard won moments. Those left out of the big picture traverse the kitsch and cultural froth of the world composed by admen. The deliver a resounding "no" to the life battery, the vestiges of the pomp are paraded within.
One problem - the pictures appear studio cuts, with everyone placed against a blank wall. It would have been more real to see the wider environments. I am sure not everyone lives in a Friends/Sex in the City/Manhattan apartment.
Adds something to the American Way of Life as it exposes the lies, deceit, propaganda and disdain carried within the normal lifestyle. Something they take great pains to hide away from as the God of mass consumption drools.
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