Dennis Walters helps bathe his twin sons Gavin and Garrett, 4, alongside his wife Lee Walters at their home on May 27, 2015 in Flint. The family rotates between having their sons bathe at their grandmother’ s, who lives outside of the city, and using bottled water and baby wipes due to their assertion that their tap water had given the boys rashes. © Brittany Greeson / MLive. com, 2016. Courtesy of the artist.
For Greeson, trust is the foundation for documenting these interactions.
“ I enter someone’ s [ life ] with the understanding that this is a gift,” she says.“ This is a blessing that people let me into this space with them. You want to treat it with sanctity.”
Flint, a city of approximately 100,000 people, is majority black. Nearly half of residents live below the poverty line. However, they receive some of the highest water bills in the country. The water crisis began after Flint’ s drinking water source was switched to the lead-contaminated Flint River in April of 2014 in an attempt to reduce costs.
Yet, it took until December of 2015 for the city to declare an official State of Emergency. As of May 2016, the state will pay residents’ water bills in full, but only for the month. It’ s unclear how and if credits will be applied in future months.
“ The water crisis has been happening in Flint for almost two years,” says Greeson.“ The water switch was in 2014 and it took people until 2016 to care? It infuriates me to this day. There were people protesting outside of
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