On his walk home from work, Dr. Eduardo Peña Dolhun passes people living on the sidewalk along Polk Street and Broadway. He’d made that walk hundreds of time before one evening on a whim he stopped at a man resting on the sidewalk and said, “Hello sir, I’m a community doctor, are you homeless?”
That one-minute conversation ended with Dolhun shooting an iPhone video clip and a still image with the camera he always carried. He never again saw that man, an HIV-positive U.S. Air Force vet named Reginald. But he’d like to, if only to inform Reginald that his portrait, smiling in a Giants cap, is now a 10-foot tall picture hanging on an exterior wall of the former High School of Commerce across from SFJAZZ on the corner of Franklin and Fell streets.
Reginald’s was the first of 31 over-sized portraits that form “Facing Homelessness Together,” each photo in a giant window space of the open air gallery that normally features portraits of the giants of jazz. It opened Sunday morning in 45-degree overcast with Dolhun standing on a corner looking up at images of 31 friends he now knows by first names.
“This was all inspired by my homeless neighbors,” said Dolhun, 56, who runs a family practice at California Pacific Medical Center. “This was just me walking by and seeing someone sitting on cold concrete and saying ‘what’s your name?’ It’s that simple.”
After shooting that first portrait of Reginald two years ago, Dolhun went to the Leica store and invested $15,000 for another camera and 50 mm lens that elevated his skill set beyond an amateur who had never taken a photography course. He felt he owed a more professional quality to people who agreed to be photographed.
“You are not at your best when you are sleeping outside on cardboard,” he said. “I didn’t want to take a picture that would just perpetuate the stereotypes that they are inherently less than a dignified human being.”
He carried the expensive Leica in a Filson fly-fishing bag along with some antibiotics and wound care supplies to treat his subjects’ skin infections while they chatted, along with an emergency blanket and DripDrop oral re-hydration solution, a product he happened to have invented. When Dolhun got deep into the project he’d grab his kit bag at lunch, along with his premed intern Kate Brickner, and head to the streets.
“We’d go into allies and places a lot of people would avoid,” said Brickner. “A lot of people would get emotional in recounting the events that got them out on the streets, but they wanted to get their stories out there.”
Dolhun had seen the street-facing wall galleries across from SFJAZZ when he stared out the lobby windows during intermission at a Pink Martini show. He knew this would be the place to show his portraits.
“I didn’t want an indoor champagne event,” he said. “My homeless neighbors are out in the cold and I wanted people to see them out in the cold.”
To book the wall gallery, he called the main line for SFJAZZ and asked for Randall Kline, founder of SFJAZZ. While Dolhun was making his pitch, Kline looked him up on the internet, learning that the physician had been awarded the 2017 Mayo Clinic Alumni Association Humanitarian Award, for pro bono work he’d done during typhoons and earthquakes in Haiti, Pakistan and Nepal.
Kline offered a one-month exhibition which will coincide with the 12-minute documentary short film “FOG” that premieres Jan. 21 at SFJAZZ. The short video interviews Dolhun recorded make up the film directed by DreamWorks editor Michael Pedraza, with a soundtrack by Bob Weir and Joe Satriani. Doctors Outreach a 501c3 charity supported the film project.
Dolhun paid for the printing of the images on vinyl to withstand the outdoor conditions on the wall gallery.
“My intention was not to be political,” Dolhun said. “Being homeless is not who you are. It is what you are experiencing.”
In spite of the atmospheric enhancement of the Sunday morning chill, or maybe because of it, none of the 31 people experiencing homelessness came by to see their images 10-feet tall and six feet wide.
“I failed to get people to show up,” said Dolhun. It’s not that they wouldn’t show, but he could not find them. “They’re always moving,” he said. But he is still hopeful. He’s now carrying a supply of small LED flashlights with him and if he sees any of his subjects, he’ll invite them to come by at night and shine a light up from the corner of Franklin and Fell to illuminate the images.
On Sunday, Drew Ross, who is homeless, happened by on a bicycle. He did not recognize any of his friends in the portraits, but he definitely recognized the quality of life they convey.
“I see stories, I see pain,” Ross said. “I see a lot of people who look tired.”
Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com. Twitter:@samwhiting sf
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