David duChemin has been  better known as The Rubber Chicken Guy, his comedic persona. The photographs on this page reflect his international work as a photographer for various relief agencies. DuChemin, who lives in the Vancouver area, recounts what led to his change of career.

MY career change was a change of calling, which intertwined several different threads in my life.

The first was simply a feeling of tiredness after performing for more than a dozen years. The second was a resumption of my love for photography. The third was a re-reading of the gospels , which led me to pray that God enlarge my heart for the poor and the excluded.

In 1995, I found myself in Haiti as both a performer and a photographer. I met one of the children my wife Sharon and I sponsor through New Missions. God so broke my heart over her that I came back a deeply changed man.

A year later, I stopped performing and began shooting for World Vision and other groups which serve the poor. My primary project now is the World Vision Gift Catalogue, but I do work for other NGOs and ministries as well.

What is more important than where I’ve been shooting, and what I’ve been doing, is why. After preaching for 12 years, I began to feel that, while the gospel is about being saved ‘from’ something, it is equally about being saved ‘to’ something – doing more than just praying that ‘his kingdom come,’ but also participating in it.

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Bringing Christ to the poor is more than just preaching; it about being with them, serving them. Our poverty is that we often don’t even know the poor.

There is one thing I feel called to do in my photography, above all others: to show the hope and the dignity, even the beauty, of people within the struggle of poverty. It’s true there is ‘dirt and hurt’ in poverty – and to not show that, to romanticize it, is to betray the poor and the reality they live in.

But only showing their tragedy tends to dehumanize them; it results in our pity, but not our love. The poor do not need pity; they need justice and mercy. We won’t render those things until we see the poor with the same eyes with which we look at ourselves.

As a believer, I am particularly drawn to the human search for the sacred – whether that’s Buddhist practice, Muslim prayer or Hindu puja.

The sooner Christians see in others that we all hunger for the same things – love, forgiveness, redemption – the sooner our efforts to share what we have in Christ will address that hunger, and not merely lead to debate.

There might be a role for apologetics; but there is a greater need for us to love and understand first.

For more photos, go to: PixelatedImage.com.

April 2008