Me revealed

Marci-Joy Clark
Photo #2 "Social Conscience"
History of Photography

I was interested in the photos of Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange. The most interesting ones, in my opinion, were the ones where the subject didn't care to look at the camera and simply accepted their fate as a subject in a picture, just as they'd accepted the rest of the things fate had thrown at them.
It was definitely difficult trying to decide how to take such a powerful photograph as the social conscience photographers. I wasn't about to wander about the street and ask homeless people for their pictures, nor did I want to take one without their knowledge, so I set up my own describing my own personal issues.
My mother left our "father" (who wasn't much of one) when my older sister was 5, my little sister was newborn and I was 3. She and my grandma took on the challenge of raising three daughters on their own and it was never easy. The first year we looked to the charity of other kind souls for things like Christmas presents because they couldn't afford things that were unnecessary. We lived in a duplex next to some meth addicts for a short time and an apartment complex in the grungy Harney district in Vancouver until our "father" attempted to kidnap my older sister, but being under the influence, kidnapped a neighbour girl for a short amount of time.
After that we moved to the place I currently live, a mobile home park near Camas. Again, the kindness of others allowed us to stay where we were, as a friend of my mom's helped us pay off the home we live in now.
The next hurdle (whilst we children were oblivious to our mother's plight) was for mom to get a job, but it was difficult without a degree. She started going to college and money was tight. Before school my older sister and I went to the elementary school's daycare for breakfast and stayed late after hours until our mom got home.
Eventually everything worked out with hurdles here and there. I developed a strange disease in middle school that plagued me through high school. I was constantly ill and drastically underweight. In this period of time, I had my tonsils removed, missed the last quarter of my 8th grade school year due to illness and suffered a collapsed lung that crushed my hopes of being in the high school marching band.
My older sister went through harsh times with mental illness and cost all of us bruises, insults and sleepless nights.
Ever oblivious, however, our little sister had few problems, despite needing special classes for slow reading because of hearing loss taking her first few years of teaching away. She was a social butterfly and never has suffered depression like the rest of us.
Now, my older sister is married with children and my little sister is married, living in Texas with her army husband. I'm at home taking my education seriously with a part time job to help make ends meet.
This poor old house is falling apart now, but my family and I still don't make the kind of money required to fix it. I spend the summers going to class, working my job and repairing whatever didn't make it through the harsher seasons. Here I sit on the broken backsteps that were recently built, but sit on the South side of the house. They've given away to rot already, so I will rebuild them this summer, as well as the front stairs that lasted 18 years of 3 children running up and down them!
Being middle class the politics in this country have meant good times for my family, or barely making ends meet, such as with this recent Bush era.
Things have never been easy for me, but I've never given up on life and I still won't.
I want this photo to show desperation and the look of someone who has worked very hard to maintain. Also, however, I want this written description to make it a bit more uplifting because you get out of life what you make of it.

Sorry for rambling . . .