Ok, it’s time to post my ‘Faces of Portland’ photo project.

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been working on a photography project documenting the simple (yet complex) images of people’s faces in downtown Portland.

It sort of started out as a way to raise awareness for homelessness, but it quickly morphed into something bigger.

See, the more pictures I took the more I realized that I’d be cutting the project’s impact short if it only featured folks living on the streets. So I began focusing more on interesting people in general.

To anyone familiar with downtown Portland, you know that it wasn’t hard for me to find unique images. As a matter of fact, the most difficult part was choosing which pics to include and which ones to leave out.

One of the things I love about photography is that it’s different from writing- with writing I’m supposed to kind of nudge the reader in a certain direction, to give an opinion based on facts and sentiments.

With photography I get to simply put the images out there for people to interpret on their own. It forces the viewer to confront a level of honesty within themselves that they might be subconsciously fighting with had the idea been presented to them in persuasive writing rather than matter-of-fact imagery.

I titled some of the photos below with the emotion that they invoke within me, and others I just attached a short caption to in an attempt to provide a bit of context.

Every one of the people featured gave me their permission to take their picture- some happily obliged, some were hesitant until I mentioned that it was for the BDN, some asked for a dollar in exchange, and some just wanted to pet my dog (he’s a great ice breaker).

Here they are, I hope you like them folks:

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For more photos by me, check me out on Instagram at chrisshorr or on Twitter @chris_shorr.

Chris Shorr

About Chris Shorr

Chris is a sixth generation Portlander who loves all things Maine. He has worked with mentally ill and marginalized adults at a Portland non-profit, on a lobster boat in Casco Bay, at several high-end Portland restaurants, and at a local meat packing plant. He also ran for Portland City Council in 2013, wrote a weekly column in the now defunct Portland Daily Sun, and currently writes a weekly column in The Portland Phoenix.