julie lives here.

For the longest time, I never took photos with people in them. In fact, I did my best not to. The feeling of intruding on a stranger’s privacy or making someone feel self-conscious if they knew I was taking their photo—I just didn’t want to be in a position where I was making someone feel uncomfortable. It probably stems from my phobia of having my own picture taken, something that I’m not very good at dealing with and I’m trying very hard to get over and not doing a very good job of it most times.

Obviously I’ve worked past that stage somewhat: as far as taking pictures of others goes. But it is still very difficult for me to ask a stranger if I can take their photograph, even if I desperately want to.

The man in the photo above is Mark Bittner. Many people were introduced to Mark and his story and the flock of wild parrots that live in the neighborhood around Coit Tower in the 2005 documentary, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. I loved that film: the quiet man and his birds in a world that didn’t notice either. It was a beautiful, intimate story of a human life in a big city. I saw this film years before I moved to San Francisco, but it stayed with me. When I moved here, one rainy day I was elated to have finally found the parrots but somewhere along the way I had forgotten about the man who had cared for them.

Around the holidays last year, it dawned on me to look Mark up. I wanted to thank him for the film, and to see if I could send him a print or two of the parrots. I found his new website and as I was composing a short email, the request to be part of i live here:SF just started to write itself. I never expected him to say yes.

Saying Yes to my project somehow equals a Yes to me as a person, and it just dawned on me that I don’t expect people to say Yes.

He’s a thoughtful, quiet person, the same man you’d expect to meet after seeing the film. We met in an alley in North Beach that he chose. I ask my subjects to choose locations that mean something to them, and he chose a small alley off of Union Street because he used to sleep in it. I’ve met a few homeless people in my time here in SF and have had the opportunity to learn some of their stories. Mark is the only person I know for whom being homeless was a spiritual path. I could understand his thinking, the path he wanted to follow and why it must be hard for him to relate this to others, most of us who live in a world where life is seen through eyes of what one has or does not have.

Mark wants to move past just being The Parrot Guy, although it’s apparent that people will remember him in that incarnation for a while. He is writing a book about his life, the consciously chosen life of the street. I’m looking forward to reading it someday.

You can read Mark’s story on i live here:SF here and see another photo of him today on CALIBER.