Street People Laughing, Athens, GA (detail)
1969, pen and ink on paper... $200
These were some homeless guys I would regularly photograph and pay as models. Most lost their jobs, then their wives left them, so their circumstances were not of their own creating. It was during the Nixon years, yet another recession, high oil prices due to an oil embargo, and he implemented wage and price freezes, which just caused prices to skyrocket when lifted. In my lifetime, I can't remember a time of economic prosperity when a Republican was president other than Eisenhower, and even he warned of the "growing power and influence of the military-industrial complex" in his farewell address to the nation.
