The Man They Stopped Recognizing

In 2014, a photograph circulated online of a homeless man named Patrick Hardison from Senatobia, Mississippi. Burns had destroyed his face years earlier while he was fighting a house fire as a volunteer firefighter. He lived in hiding — wearing hats, prosthetics, avoiding mirrors, terrified of how strangers recoiled at his appearance. He described himself as a man trapped inside his own disfigurement.…