mission, you went to them all. But, you could only go at certain times, and you had to do this or that to get a bed, or food, or clothes, and at this other one you could get a shower, etc. So I began to visit other missions to find out what they were like.

I called the Union Gospel Mission director, Guy Sire, and made an appointment to talk to him about the work I was doing. He gave me a tour of their facility and a subscription to The Little Paper, their in-house newsletter. I was told I could photograph the evening service if it was okay with the people preaching that night, who were from a Nazarene church in Kent, a town about thirty miles south of Seattle.

I soon discovered that there was a strong link between the missions and the community churches that helped support them. As in most of the Seattle missions, prayer services at the Union Gospel Mission were conducted by people from churches in the Seattle area. A different church group preached each morning and/or night of the month, and then the rotation started again the next month. None of the preachers ever said no to me. The leader of the group doing the service would announce that I was going to photograph, but only those people in chairs on the right side of the room, so, if anybody minded, would they please move to the left side. Once or twice someone did move, but mostly nobody cared. Also, by this time people were beginning to recognize me, especially the Indians, many of whom were still carrying around portraits I had made of them earlier.

These were the first religious services I photographed at a mission. I could photograph anything I wanted to on the right side of the room or at the altar. Although I knew I was in this wonderful situation, I was still making photographs of individuals and not the situation. During the first few services I positioned myself in front and photographed people sitting in chairs listening to the service. I used a slight telephoto lens (105mm) and essentially made portraits, sometimes with two or three people as the center of interest, with shallow depth of field and tight composition (usually just