Benjaman Kyle UPDATE | The Missing Person Who is Not Missing

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Since iON answered questions about Benjaman Kyle on 22 September 2010 and identified him (audio above), filmmaker John Wikstrom made a short documentary, Finding Benjaman (video below). Wikstrom tracked Kyle down in Jacksonville, Florida where he was sleeping in a park with no hope for the future.

After the video, Kyle was back on the news, and thanks to the efforts of a certain Florida news anchor, his story reached senators and representatives in the US Congress, who said the Government has got to respond, and solve his identity crisis.

He was issued a Florida Legacy ID, still lacking a social security number, which established his new identity at state level. A kind-hearted restaurant owner offered Benjaman a job, and someone offered him an air-conditioned shed to sleep in, so he wouldn’t have to live in a park. Benjaman Kyle’s life changed completely, because of John Wikstrom and his documentary, but there is still one thing left unresolved—he still needs that social security number. FindingBenjaman.com has more information about his unique situation.

After catching a screening of Finding Benjaman at the Tribeca Film Festival, artist Miguel Endara created a portrait of Benjaman using stippling, a technique which involves a pen, patience, and and millions of dots. The portrait took nearly 138 hours to complete, and at a rate of 4.25 dots per second, he estimates the piece contains roughly 2.1 million of them. The hope is to spread awareness for Benjaman’s situation and raise money through the sale of prints to support a petition to get him a new social security number.