A year and a half ago, photographer Horia Manolache debuted "Prince/Pauper," a photo exhibition at the Red Vic that featured photos of homeless men and women side-by-side with photos of them as they imagine their ideal selves.
Now, Maniolache is launching an Indiegogo campaign to turn the photographs into a book.
The book project, called "Homeless People As They Dreamed To Become," will include the personal narratives of the photographs' subjects, Manolache said, to give their photographs more depth and to preserve their stories.
The subjects photographed for the project all come from San Francisco, largely from Market Street and the Upper Haight.
"Mike, Honey, Hatter, [and] Max" were the names of the subjects Manolache met on Haight Street, he said. "Hatter helped me in the beginning to find people for this project. I met him during my walks on Haight Street; I was photographing this street thinking to capture its spirit."
"My project is about the dreams of the people who have forgotten to dream or couldn't dream," Manolache writes on the campaign page. "They reached a moment in their life when they don't have food, water, they don't have a place to wash themselves, the bank took their house, their mind is unsettled from war horrors or they are wanted by police for an unpaid bill."
The fundraiser is open for 20 more days, and has raised about $2,200 of its $9,400 goal. Donations of $45 or more receive a copy of the finished book.
Manolache is also using some of the donation tiers to raise funds for Taking It To The Streets, the Haight-based charity that provides homeless youth with employment, housing, and mentoring to get off the streets and re-launch their lives.
Taking It To The Streets is currently looking for more funding to support housing units in SoMa and Tenderloin SROs. According to its co-founder, Christian Calinsky, these units run the organization about $42,000 a month in maintenance costs.
Manolache said that Taking It To The Streets first came to his attention immediately following the Red Vic show, when he was scouting around for organizations to which he could donate some of the proceeds.
"I looked for an organization that takes care of the homeless people from [the Haight]," he said. "I watched [Taking It To The Streets] since then, and I saw that they help many people to integrate, they give jobs, a place to stay. Even somebody from this project has now a home because of them. So they found a way to make things happen, and I believe they need to be supported."
