Episode 87: Kim Watson

Art is Beautiful Even When it Depicts Ugliness and Strife.

Kim Watson is an artist, photographer and an author. He views his work as having the potential to be a catalyst for change. In his newly released book and forthcoming documentary Trespass: Portraits of Unhoused Life, Love and Understanding, Kim gives us an intimate view of what life is like for the homeless people living on the streets of Los Angeles. The stories are sometimes brutal. People are not always rescued from their bleak circumstances.

 With his stunning photography and precise storytelling, Kim helps us see the full humanity of people we often want to turn away from on the streets of our cities. He tells us the story of a young girl who lives in a car with her parents as they move from that car to motels rooms and back to the car again. He tells the story of a once famous jazz musician who has found himself on the streets, but the music still burns within his soul. He tells the story of a disabled, wheelchair-bound young woman who does crystal meth to stay up at night so she will not be attacked when she sleeps. And she is pregnant.

 Somehow with his lens and his pen, he elevates these people in such a way that we can see our own humanity through their sufferings, their triumphs, their memories. Admittedly, with complication, Trespass is beautiful. And that is as Kim intended it to be. He says that one of the things about doing the book, is that he wanted it to be beautiful because he wanted us to see the beauty in the art. Because that leads us to see the beauty in the person.