Are We Cruel? Or They?

^A Beggar and a Lady with a LV Bag: The photo is purposedly overexposed to highlight the two subjects, the beggar facing the camera with a forlorn facial expression and the tubby lady with a LV bag around her arm and some shopping, walking away head down. The highlighting and the two subjects serve to make a stark contrast in telling the theme: "Where is our compassion?", of which the effect is hopefully complemented by the body gestures of the two subjects.

 

Technically, the shot was done in a pedestrian subway. The ISO was turned to 1600 to better cater for an adequate shutter speed in the comparatively low light situation. With a lower ISO value, I would have less elbowroom for dragging the exposure to brighten up the background without blurring the two subjects (cos the adequate shutter speed would be way past the safe shutter speed to steady the two subjects; you may search my blog for some idea about the safe shutter speed).

 

In the streets of Hong Kong, what looks less noxious to the locals as the days wear on is a decade-long phenomenon. Probably, the Hongkongers are geting used to it, namely the proliferation of beggars.

 

Their multiplication is noxious because most of them are no ordinary beggars. They take begging as a profession, making a living just like you and me in our workplaces. To these beggars, the streets are the workplaces. The noxious part about it is not as much as they go about begging than they do this in a business-like fashion. Most of them joined the trade to echo the calling of the times which was the handover of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China.

 

Some years before the handover, there was a surge of sightings of these mostly Chinese female beggars in the streets, discernable by their similar trading tools and working smocks in black provided by the wire-pullers. They were mostly found in busy areas at certain intervals, doing the similar begging gestures to lure proceeds. These women are still seen in Mongkok and Casueway Bay at times. Then there came the Mandarin-speaking street hustlers. Their common tactics were to gain money from passers-by on excuses of pockets having been picked or losing their friends or ways.

 

^In the film camera era when the rangefinders were common, Kodak taught users to place the main subject in the centre of the shot because the viewfinder afforded a limited coverage, which was not explained as the reason then. This teaching is erroneous in terms of, inter alia, the golden sections in photography.

 

Of course, some rules are sometimes for breaking when there is a reason to break them. Here the beggar is placed almost in the middle for one purpose: to visually turn him into just a part of the street furniture, complemented by the mailing facility which balances him in the middle. Hopefully, this composition underlies his identity, or the lack of it. The small space on the left of the scene is to give viewers a reference to his position and to contradict his little static universe which is an enormity to him.

 

When the beggar phenomenon first caught the attention of the media, the TV news departments raced to produce special reports on the matter. After some time, there was less interest in it and the professional beggars' life returned to normal. Nowadays, as to all other professionals, the complexity of modern customers has pushed these professionals to come up with new tricks for making money: beg for donations as monks! A number of arrest cases involving these fake monks had been reported when, likewise, the matter first saw the light.

 

The most noxious thing about making begging a profession is that this teaches most locals to turn a blind eye to the real beggars. These fake beggars make the lives of the real beggars more miserable. So, when shooting the first shot of this post, my mind was like, "I don't really blame the seemingly unsympathising lady. This beggar can be a counterfeit." Talking about counterfeits, we know who are most talented in it. So, are we cruel to the beggars? Or, are we turned into such by those really heartless wire-pullers. But then, what are the differences between us.

 

At least, it is too risky to smuggle the supposedly kiddnapped kids with limbs purposedly broken to make them real beggars to work for the wire-pullers. Otherwise....

 

---- Postscript: The multiplication of beggars is also attributable to, for sure, the two economic downturns which hit Hong Kong after the handover and again more recently. But those are about the real beggars.