I had not planned to photograph this event. I came across it because someone shared the Facebook post, which described it as an operation to find and feed homeless people across Brisbane overnight as part of #OpSafeWinter. The group organising it was Anonymous — the hacktivist collective, the one with the Guy Fawkes masks — and they had set up what genuinely looked like a small disaster relief centre in a park.
By the time I arrived, they had long trestle tables covered in donated food, an enormous outdoor barbecue running at full capacity, boxes of clothing sorted by size, and a generator powering lights and a sound system. Volunteers in masks were cooking sausages and onions by firelight. Someone had brought a guitar. Someone else had brought a light-up disco ball.
On the masks: The Guy Fawkes mask makes portraits strange in the best possible way. You cannot read a face, so you read everything else — posture, hands, what a person is doing. The older man I photographed first had a white beard below the mask and a name tag pinned to his jacket. The anonymity was partial, deliberately so.
On the light: Almost everything I shot that night was lit by the barbecue, by LED camping lights, or by that disco ball refracting off a water bottle. None of it was what you would call ideal photographic light. All of it was interesting.
On what they were doing: Groups of volunteers had gone out in cars to scout the city for people sleeping rough, noted locations, and were now directing others to deliver food parcels directly. It was organised, methodical, and run entirely by people who had given up a winter Saturday night to do it. The photography almost felt secondary to just watching it happen.
On the clothing table: The clothing distribution was the most quietly moving part of the night. Donated winter gear — jackets, jumpers, warm socks — laid out on tables, and volunteers helping people find things in their size. No paperwork, no conditions, no questions.
I stayed until after midnight. The barbecue did not stop.