"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall..."

I chose this image for no other reason than I thought it was somehow emblematic of the subject...

Lately it seems there is a lot of bad shit happening to good people I've met through photography. Without going into specifics, I'm hearing about people being fucked over by friends, family, lovers, roommates, landlords, banks, employers, schools, doctors, lack of doctors, managers, models, photographers, "the man" and the world at large. I know there's nothing new in this -- it happens every day, everywhere, and has since the dawn of time. Perhaps I'm just expanding my circle and getting to know MANY more people socially than I did before. I think also I'm picking up more on problems big and small from the confessional nature of people's blogs and MySpace and such. But any more, it seems the mission of our society is to fuck over our fellow man and woman whenever possible, as it's the only way left to keep up, let alone get ahead.

I'm also getting more insight into the "Catch-22" nature of being broke in America in 2006. (Which is still better than being a lot of other places.) Many of the models I'm working with are in their early 20s, and it seems a lot has changed in the 20 or so years since I was that age. While I've never been close to being rich, I'll admit, I've been pretty fortunate in many ways. But it seems that my broke-ass friends back then had an easier time than my broke friends today. It also seems that today these 20-somethings are less prepared to deal with the problems, and are less likely to be able to depend on parents or family to help them through the rough patches.

On an individual basis, the situations will be dealt with one way or another. I guess by being sympathetic to the challenges facing so many people, I'm aggregating and somehow amplifying their problems in my mind's echo chamber, where they've been compounding over the past year and are now pointed straight at my liberal bleeding heart. I do what I can to help when I can, or at least try not to add to the difficulties. But it's almost as if all these problems were pouring down on one composite person, rather than raining down more or less evenly on everyone. It just seems now that nobody can afford an umbrella to protect them on the rainy days.