Brian
Moochin Photoman
I saw Brian sitting on the ground in a phone booth.He had his possessions in a black bin liner between his legs with a finished bottle of sherry beside him. I took a couple of photographs through the glass and he smiled at me. I gestured to see if i could take some more and he shrugged. So i opened the door to the phone booth and we got talking.
Brian told me that he was Falls Road Prod to which i replied that there wasn’t too many of them. He went on to tell me that he had been staying in the Sally Army at the beginning of the week and was now staying at the Star on Divis Street which cost £30 a week. When i asked him about the other street drinkers he replied “They come and go” and that he didn’t have any issue with them or them with him.
He has a kind face and i’m glad that i stopped to take the time to talk to him and take his portrait. I’ll be looking for him again to see if i can flesh out his story a bit more and give him a copy of this.
Those are the words of John Baucher, the Moochin Photoman. This little encounter tells us as much about John as it does about Brian. John is the sort of photographer who treats Brian—a man with a face like an unmade bed and, one suspects, only a passing familiarity with sobriety—with the same courtesy and respect he gives to local Irish politicians and artists. There are good photographers in the world, and good people, and sometimes we’re lucky enough to find someone who is both.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
