Photographer Finds Her Homeless Father And Documents His Life On The Streets
BuzzFeed - Latest 2015-08-30
Summary:
After years apart, photographer Diana Kim found her father living on the streets in Hawaii and documented the struggle to reconnect with him and get help.
Photographer Diana Kim, who grew up on Oahu, lost touch with her father when she was 5 years old, but later found him homeless and documented his slow journey to get off the streets.
"I remember this day clearly," Kim wrote on her blog about this 25-year-old photo of her with her father. "He always greeted me with a cherry red Ring Pop ... for the first 5 years of my life it was all about the Ring Pop."
Diana Kim / Via homelessparadise.com
The 30-year-old law student told BuzzFeed News that she started documenting the homeless in 2003. She "naturally gravitated toward the homeless because of my own personal experiences," in which she spent parts of her childhood living in cars and parks.
Diana Kim with her father after he got off the streets in 2014.
Diana Kim / Via homelessparadise.com
"It was at that time when she shared that my father had a mental illness and needed to take his medications," she told BuzzFeed News.
Kim, who had not known about her father's mental condition, started to gather information with the intent of reconnecting with her father.
After driving the streets of Honolulu, Kim found her father at the corner of a busy intersection.
Diana Kim / Via homelessparadise.com