Photo put human face on victim of blunder

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This article was published 11/02/2009 (6443 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT was April 2008 and amateur photographer Maurice Bruneau saw the man sitting on King Street looking dazed. Within five months, that 45-year-old man would be dead after waiting 34 hours for medical care in the Health Sciences Centre emergency room.

And it would take more than another three months before that man, Brian Sinclair, got a dignified public face on the cover of the Free Press.

But Bruneau, 36, never forgot the man, and he’s grateful he stopped to talk to him for a few minutes and take a picture.

"It’s nice to know under all that surface negative stuff there’s a human being in there, who has pride and dignity about themselves," said Bruneau, 36, a youth-care worker who’s also known in the city for his poignant shots of street-involved Winnipeggers.

"I’m so glad he has a face now… after just being a name in the paper, it’s so nice to know he has a face and people will be able to realize the human being."

Bruneau said he doesn’t want to be paid for the image, but wants money for its use to go to local charity Siloam Mission in Sinclair’s memory.

The men exchanged few words last April when Bruneau asked to shoot him, but Bruneau said Sinclair assented with a nod and then sat proudly for a shot.

"That was one of my all-time favourite photos," said Bruneau.

"There’s such an irony in that photo, because you have someone legless and in a wheelchair on the street… He has this one moment of incredible dignity, and you can just see it in his face.

"Everything that’s bad about him is gone, in that one second, and I was so lucky to be able to capture it."

Bruneau was contacted by the Free Press after photo editor Jon Thordarson saw the image of a man resembling Sinclair on photo-sharing website Flickr last year.

He asked a reporter to track down the photographer who snapped it. Staff at the Salvation Army Booth Centre and Bradley Sinclair, Brian’s brother, helped confirm that Brian Sinclair was the subject of the picture — which they had never seen.

"I think people don’t see these people, they just see right through them… They’re easy to ignore," said Bruneau, who has shied away from media attention. "I don’t want this story to be about me."

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca