In a nation as prosperous as the United States, it’s a cruel paradox that so many find themselves without a place to call home. For Dutch photographer Tony Dočekal, this dichotomy between the promise of the American Dream and the reality faced by those on the margins of society became a focal point. Over a six-year period, Dočekal traveled to Arizona and California, volunteering with organizations serving the unhoused and getting to know the individuals behind the statistics. The result is “The Color of Money and Trees”, a haunting yet deeply human portrait series that challenges our notions of success, belonging, and the pursuit of happiness.
Snapshots of Survival
Each photograph in Dočekal’s collection tells a story – one often marked by hardship, loss, and the daily struggle to survive. In Los Angeles, she met Larry, living out of his car on Hope Street. “I smile to keep from crying,” he confessed to her, just a day before giving his vehicle to someone else he felt needed it more. In Skid Row, Chad modeled a pink wedding dress, his only possession after his tent was robbed. “This is everything I have, all I can carry,” he declared, turning an act of violation into one of bold self-expression.
Everything is replaceable.
– Chad, Skid Row resident
For many of Dočekal’s subjects, their few belongings took on a talismanic quality – physical reminders of their resilience in the face of daunting odds. One man bore a tattoo reading “C’est la Vie” beneath scars on his back, a stoic acceptance of all that life metes out. Another, Brian, an Army veteran, found purpose in caring for his dog, Buddy. “A pet is a reason to keep going,” he reflected. “Someone is relying on me.”
Questioning the American Dream
Interwoven with these personal narratives are Dočekal’s own reflections, recorded in a diaristic style as she grappled with the dissonance between American mythmaking and the realities she witnessed firsthand. The book’s title, “The Color of Money and Trees”, alludes to this tension – green as both the hue of luck and lucre, and nature as a force indifferent to the vagaries of the human world.
Go not knowing where. Take not knowing what. The way is long. The path unknown.
– Logan, Joshua Tree resident since 1964
Throughout her travels, Dočekal encountered people from all walks of life – from Hungarian-born Eva, who had crisscrossed the country eight times in her vehicular home to nine-year-old Lyric, whose family lived in a converted school bus. Their stories, while deeply individual, speak to experiences shared by unhoused people nationwide:
- Lack of affordable housing and support after economic or health crises
- Struggles with mental health, addiction, and the effects of trauma
- Inability to access resources due to lack of transportation, ID, or mailing address
- Discrimination and criminalization based on housing status
But Dočekal’s work resists easy categorization or pat solutions. By allowing her subjects to share their stories in their own words and bearing witness to their ingenuity and grit, she crafts a nuanced portrait of a population too often reduced to stereotypes. As Eva reflected: “I don’t talk to God, but I speak with strangers. And sometimes even with the dust.”
The Power of Witnessing
In a culture enamored with narratives of individual bootstrapping, “The Color of Money and Trees” is a sobering reminder of the systems and structures that enable some to thrive while abandoning others to the fringes. By training her lens on the unhoused with empathy and incisiveness, Dočekal invites us to confront a facet of American life oft relegated to the shadows.
That night, the walls of my motel room didn’t feel so secure anymore. I thought of Virginia Woolf: “how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
– Tony Dočekal
Though rooted in the American West, the themes Dočekal explores are universally human – our yearning for connection and understanding, our struggle to find meaning and beauty in a world often harsh and unyielding. By bearing witness to the lives of those so frequently unseen, she challenges us to look beyond facile dichotomies of “us” and “them”, and to recognize the intricate tapestry of stories that comprise our shared social fabric.
In the end, “The Color of Money and Trees” is more than a book of photography. It is a meditation on inequality and resilience, a reckoning with the shadows of the American Dream. Most of all, it is an invitation to see – truly see – those with whom we share our world, in all their fallible, striving, indelible humanity.
