Documenting the homeless people in GTA V
Alan Butler is collecting images of all of the homeless people in the video game Grand Theft Auto V. The game is set in fictional Los Santos, based heavily off of the real life Los Angeles (and other surrounding California areas).
Adopting a photojournalistic approach, the series aims to engage in a sort of social-realism for the software-age, documenting poverty and the lives of the homeless within video game environment’s socio-economic hegemony. Through performative engagement with the uncanny simulations of society’s most vulnerable, Down and Out in Los Santos aims to unearth the viewer’s empathy and humanity through manipulative photographic tropes.