APRIL 2024 MAGAZINE

Homeless people might appear to be funny. Grooming is not high on their list of things to do. They wear bizarre combinations of tattered clothes.  Sometimes they shout into garbage cans at nothing at all.  Pushing grocery carts full of cans and rotten scraps of food -- they hoard to make themselves feel safe and like they have a home.  And while they look funny, smell funny and act funny, most of them are mentally ill, and that...

After 18 years, a burned-out Dwayne Ibsen gave up his post as an Omaha high school drama teacher and took his costumes with him. He had paid for materials used in nearly every period outfit, often sending cloth and drawings home with actors, expecting them to find a seamstress and bring back finished pieces. When his teaching career ended, Ibsen had costumes everywhere. It was the most natural thing in the world to rent them out from a...

I was speaking to someone I've know since I became a professional photographer in the New York area who operates a small business that repairs photographic strobe equipment. Times are tough, he said, because these days it's cheaper and easier to toss what's broken and buy something new ­– and many of the old-time camera repair shops have permanently close their doors. These were places I learned about technologies that were advancing our...