Awaken Los Angeles Eric Frenkil

The trip had been one of disillusionment. Thirteen Jewish schools paid for us to meet in Los Angeles for five days of service learning, yet I soon discovered that most of the participants had signed-up chiefly to enhance their own college resumes, returning from Skid Row each day to an ostentatious hotel. Thus, I had trouble finding a group of genuine activists.

I rose at four o'clock on the last morning while my peers lay still and asleep. Careful not to awaken my roommates, I shuffled through a suitcase for warm clothes, headed downstairs, and set off along the abandoned winter roads. I was on a quest to truly encounter what we had traveled so far to study.

In the far-off distance, a saxophonist crooned the melodies of Paul Desmond, capturing appropriately the draped blankets that existed on nearly every block, each blanket a nightly womb for the man, woman, or even child who slept underneath. My camera echoed a snap as it captured each portrait in the dusk. A certain still frame caught my eye - a man sleeping in the shelter of blankets beneath a concrete overpass, with a well-shaven corporate skyline behind him. Snap!

In that moment, everything was clearly illustrated through a simple Polaroid! It occurred to me that we...