Hollywood Portrait: The Homeless Survivor

Meet Kevin, 29, of Tuscon, Arizona. This portrait was adapted from a conversation with Kevin [who requested that I not give out his name] on the first day we met on Hollywood Boulevard in May 2008.

Can I take your photo? You want my photo?

Yeah. There's nobody like you. I know.

What happened? Shot. Shot in the face.

And you survived that? No. [Laughs] I'm dead.

Sorry, that was a stupid question. It’s hard to believe you could survive getting shot in the face. What happened – was it an accident or did someone try to shoot you?  I did it myself. Tried to kill myself.

You did? Yeah.

Where? Arizona.

Phoenix? Tucson.

How did it feel, after you shot yourself and then came to, and realized you weren't dead? Agony. The worst agony ever.

Man. Yeah.

What kind of gun? 30-aught-six.

You got your face reconstructed? [Laughs] What do you think?

How did you end up here? I had to get out of Arizona, dude. Had to get away from people there, from the whole scene. And I love Hollywood, always have. Have been here before.

Are you homeless? Yeah, I am right now. But I'd rather be homeless here than anywhere. Hollywood is cool, I like the people. I get some  green-tobacco. You know what that is – green tobacco? Yeah. It's legal, you know.

Anyway it’s cool here. I’d way rather be homeless here than be home  in Tucson.

How bad did things get that you wanted to die? Bad. Really bad. The worse kind you can imagine.

Are you gonna try again? No. I tried once. That's enough.

You got head-phones. Are you into music? Oh yeah. It’s everything. Gotta have my tunes. If I didn’t have my tunes I wouldn’t have nothing, dude.

What kind of music? Every kind. Every kind of music there is, that’s what I like.

Thanks for doing this - for talking and letting me take your picture. It's all good, dude. I'll be around. Anytime you want me, just look around Hollywood. I'm always here.

Today’s Hollywood Portrait differs from preceding ones, as it's not brand-new; I took it on May 2, 2008 and posted it on  Flickr. Never before or since has any photo or story I’ve posted in these years received more attention, than this one of Kevin. [I took many photos of him that day and a few weeks later, but this is the first one.] 

It went viral. People posted it on aggregation sites such as Digg and Reddit, where it was featured on their front pages, and its viewership – which Flickr records – shot through the roof. Whereas my photos sometimes get upward of 50 views over a few days, this one got 296,511 in its first month.

The photo prompted hundreds of comments. Many simply commented that it was a dynamic photo, as in, “Wow. Awesome, dude.” Many others reflected on their own relative good fortune, compared to the hell Kevin has gone through.

Some felt I had exploited Kevin's misfortune to benefit myself, somehow, including Kevin's brother, who wrote in with much anger both at me and at Kevin, and informed us that Kevin intentionally shot himself with his father's rifle to hurt his father, a detail Kevin neglected to mention:

"My name is Aaron and Kevin is my brother. He is alive because I found him rolling on the ground, his face gone from the bottom of his eyes to the back of his jaw. Make no mistake he hates his father so much he would use the only rifle that meant anything to him. Kevin is certainly not homeless. He chose to leave home because at his home there are rules that he does not want to follow. He has used the guilt of our mother to get whatever he wants. Drugs suck and you Mr. Zollo are just exploiting my brother to get your photos on the internet."

Many people responded to this. What I didn't expect was that Kevin, himself, would see this photo, and give us an update on his whereabouts as well as his estimation of the photograph and its surrounding furor:

Kaboom this is Kevin. I could reach the trigger just fine. Thank you all for postive/negative comments. I’m chillin’ at HOME back in old Tucson. Wondering how to move back to Beverly Hills. Only three hundred thousand and some odd people, come on, what happend to the internet? Thanks P.S.Zollo for talking to me that day and hearing my story. You’re a great photographer.

Since receiving Kevin's first message, I have received others from him and his family. He's back in Tuscon, having reconnected in some way with his family. His cousin wrote me that nobody in the family knew where he was or if he was alive until they found my photograph. Kevin's main aim these days seems to be to reconnect with a girl named Carla he met in Hollywood.