Lost and Found

“We have secrets about traveling you wouldn’t believe and we share with no one but ourselves.” - Huck This portfolio is a portrait series entitled "Lost and Found." The series takes a close look at the individual souls of lost youth who abandon home to travel around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping. Within their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism or a search for transient jobs, they find community in their traveling friends. They are photographed on public streets using natural light, in the space in which they are found. In some cases they have been photographed in different cities, at different periods of time and sometimes years apart. Their appearances are the result of their experiences. Like graffiti on walls of the city streets they inhabit and the trains they ride, their bodies and faces become the visual storybook of their lives. Tattoos are often given to one another, and their patchwork clothing is a mismatch of found items. The high of freedom however, does not come without consequence. Their lifestyle is physically risky and rampant with substance abuse. Often unseen and mistaken by their appearances, they are some of the kindest people one might meet. Their souls are open and their gift is time. As one states “They will give you their time because time is all they have.” And in some cases, in the family they have lost, they have found each other.