Jon Linton sees people. That’s what he does for a living and for a life, seeing people who haven’t experienced being seen in days, months, even years. And in seeing them, he redeems them – and himself.
The I Have A Name Project was born on the streets of Phoenix in 2007. Jon came upon a homeless man, holding a sign that proclaimed him a Vietnam veteran. I have walked past this man many times, this woman, this face, this awkward moment. I have averted my eyes. But Jon stopped walking. He asked the man his name, and the man broke down in tears. “You have no idea how long it has been since someone cared to ask my name,” the man said. It was Chuck, as it happens. Chuck Ridgeway.
Chuck was somebody’s son, once. Maybe he was someone’s father too, I don’t know, but he was certainly someone’s child, someone’s friend, perhaps sibling, someone’s comrade in the jungles and the paddy fields. These are the things that go along with a name, the network of relationships that tells us that we’re human. That we’re alive. But on the streets, the name is stripped away, and with it goes a world.
If you’ve ever known, even loved, someone who lives on the streets, or who might have, who would have, but for the grace and commitment of others, then you’ve thought about this. You’ve wondered who that person is, who loved them, who knew them before no one did. Who they were before. Jon was compelled to stop, to be disrupted by the question, and this makes him unusual. He’s a photographer, so perhaps that’s where his “lens” was already directed. He’s accustomed to seeing. Interested. And the faces he’s captured in black and white go along with the names that are lost on the streets; they are part of the act of redemption, both of seer and of seen.
From art to activism, Jon’s project grew and became the Let’s Be Better Humans campaign. Now, he has a bus, provided by a benefactor, and he travels from state to state, all up and down the west coast, even over to Wisconsin, putting a human face and a human name to the homeless, the dispossessed, restoring dignity, providing aid, and above all, seeing and thereby teaching others to see.
My husband and I own an inn in Ashland, Oregon. Our innkeeper, Angela, is a longtime friend of Jon’s, and she convinced him to add Ashland to his list of stops as he made his way north from California. After a harrowing ride up Highway 1 in his bus of many colors, Jon and his two videographers pulled up to the curb outside our inn. In his fedora, with his well-trimmed, salt-and-pepper beard and tattoos, Jon looks the part – bohemian and arty with a certain urban flair. He has the slightly distracted energy of the enthusiast, and I can’t figure out if he’s an introvert or an extrovert, so I decide on both. He’s welcoming, friendly, even after his wearying drive, and he gives us a tour of the bus, lets us sign the seats and shares stories about his travels and his work. We put the three of them up in rooms for a good night’s sleep, and the following day, we join him on the main drag as he makes a public presence of humanizing the dehumanized. A few homeless people have wandered by or taken up residence beside the bus, and people drop off donations throughout the afternoon.
It’s spontaneous work. A windfall of clothes or supplies from a generous citizen, directed to where it will be valued. A meal, or shoes, or a blanket or coat, or maybe someone will hitch a ride. Jon photographs the people he encounters, adds faces and names to these multitudes, emerging from the shadows. They’re beautiful faces, full of gravity, experience, pain, loss, and even softness, love. This is what the camera captures, what we miss, somehow, in our day to day lives. The faces speak more than their names, more than their history. They speak their humanity, and in doing so, we see the universal face, the one that is our own.
I think of this as ministry. I was raised without religion. Our spirituality was one of the road, of nature, of family and the love of words and culture. We were nomads of sorts in my youth, and this gave me a love for the road, as well as an understanding of the dispossessed. There is an inheritance to lacking place – be it a place of geography, community or tradition. My parents left the Midwest, left Catholicism, left extended family and many of the values they were raised with, at least outwardly. And yet, somehow, I have inherited all those things, stripped of their exteriors so that I have only the essence. I am connected to the relatives I’ve seen only occasionally since childhood, connected to thunderstorms and fireflies, to stained glass and murmuring. I am connected to my origins, but not constrained by them. I am connected to God, without having a name for him, or her, or it, and I think this is powerful and good, because you can’t put things in boxes, least of all God. If you do, you have the box, and that’s mostly what we get in life and religion and politics, these days. Boxes. We worship idols instead of mystery, spirit. Names bestow identity, reality, and it is this gesture that brings the homeless man into the fold when he becomes “Chuck.” And yet, names can strip away reality too by reducing substance to form, presence to idea.
Names have power, as any two-bit magician knows.
I am connected to Jesus too, though I don’t know how or why. Christianity leaves me baffled with its stridency, its exclusion, its passion fueled and constrained by the basic tenet of having a limited constituency. It seems to say, “Jesus belongs to us,” when that can’t possibly be true. How many people, down the long years, have vindicated acts of violence, hate and torture, in his name? And what about the invisible acts of violence, the judgment, the certainty of righteousness, the exclusion of souls from a salvation of one’s own interpretation? Because the Jesus I know in my heart, the one who simply appeared at a young age, before I had a name for him, stands side by side with everyone. That was the whole point for me, seeing through Jesus’s eyes, and therefore seeing the wholeness and beauty in every human being – already, right now, without the need to do anything at all. I think Jesus healed by seeing wholeness. He healed by seeing, just like Jon does, so I’ll call what he does a ministry, even if he doesn’t. Jon sees them as they are, even in addiction, in mental illness, in the experience of irrevocable loss — he does not sugar coat it. And they are generous enough to give the gift of being seen.
The Jesus creed is simple, as I see it. Radical love. It is absolute, as ruthless as it is gentle, exposing every limitation, bias, prejudice and weakness in our perspectives and our natures — regardless of what authority that bias is shielded by. To my mind, it doesn’t matter how you interpret scripture or how many people agree with you – in the end, the only authority with real power is love itself, and its dictates are self-evident. And though love may rise up, driven by its nature, although it is both lion and lamb, it is always for, not against. This is how it remains love, by adhering to what it is, not being defined, shaped, determined — and thereby corrupted — by what it isn’t.
Love can only see wholeness. Love sees you when you cannot see yourself, and it will wait forever.
But that’s another post for another day. I’m running out of space here to do Jon’s work justice, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. I am grateful to have been touched by his crusade – there, I’ve said it – and I invite you to follow him too, on Instagram or his website (links below), or maybe coming to a town near you. And if you’re like me, maybe you’ll be reminded, even for a moment, that being human isn’t earned. Nor is it something that can be lost. It is all of our inheritance, yet its riches can only be bestowed through communal acts of kindness; we see our own face in our brother or our sister. We hear our own name.
Beautiful, Julie! You captured so much of what wholeness is. And Jon’s openness to seeing that shows in his honest, compassionate and beautifully shot photos is honored and respected by your post. Loved reading every moment of it!
I’m so glad you were touched by this. It’s been a thought-provoking experience, reflecting on homelessness and this whole notion of who deserves what — and to meet someone who doesn’t ask those questions but just tries to provide what’s needed added an important voice to the inquiry. As always, thanks for your engagement, Mom!
These images are stunning, and your story is so compelling both for the “justice” it does offer Jon’s work, and also for your experience of the encounter. To be seen is to connect us to our own humanity and to do so in someone else — I will mull on that for a while. Thank you!
Let’s mull together! You know, I found myself going through certain thought processes when I encountered Jon’s work. Like, hmmm, I’m not sure that person deserves help etc. I go through that especially when it comes to those I perceive to be young and able-bodied. The image of the woman shooting up in her neck is incredibly confronting. Jon spoke with her before he took the shot, and she related a dream she has every night of being chased by a monster, and the monster is addiction. And I was struck by the fact that Jon doesn’t condition his aid, or his “seeing,” on his perceptions of deservedness, or on anything at all. That was one of my learning moments. Empowering people to be actors in the face of their circumstances is important. But the fact that Jon doesn’t go through any of that judgment or analysis was quite a powerful insight — and I think that’s the part about seeing with “God’s” eyes.
Wonderful profile, Julie! We really do teach ourselves to “unsee” the homeless people in our midst. Learning to truly see others, especially those we’ve learned not to see, like Jon does in his work, feels like a step toward being more loving and human. These are beautiful and powerful portraits.
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, Gabi! A picture really is worth a thousand words. Perhaps it’s ironic that it take a picture — a facsimile of life — to make us “see” what’s in front of us. Hmmmm!