Tramps and Saints

In “Tramps and Saints,” Kelly Rae Daugherty finds the sacred in the accidental. Shot inside the cluttered confines of a stranger's home, with nothing staged and little known, the series unfolds like a modern myth. Through instinctive composition and uncanny visual motifs—like balloons found tied to a parking meter—Daugherty reframes addiction, exhaustion, and tenderness as rites of passage. The result is neither performance nor voyeurism, but something closer to revelation. The series moves from Beggar’s Wave to Rapture, tracing faith within ruin.