Do you find that some conditions are harder to apply this to?
I seek the human being behind the poverty, the illness, the wealth, or the success. No person is too famous, too poor, or too ill to be seen. No condition is too extreme. The most "extreme" situations offer the photographer the most heartfelt moments. Death is intertwined with life, to embrace it without reserve is to embrace life. I often photograph in hospital intensive care units, a place that makes people aware of their mortality. What a privilege to be given a glimpse of that finality! How a person carries that gift, and responds to it, is what I am attentive to.
Does photography affect the subject?
I have seen remarkable attitudinal changes in people during a shoot, and have no doubt that the photography is a valuable healing agent. People are flattered when attention is provided them, and sincerely moved when they are cared for. Famous people, indigents, or patients facing great odds are no exception. A sensitive photographer will allow a patient his rest, but in the same time, understands that the interaction with the photographer can be a welcome distraction to the medical routine. There is a general tendency to leave people who are recuperating alone, but if they are approached with heart, it can enhance the healing process.
The picture taking process becomes part of the subject's catharsis and healing. The photographer records the truth inherent in the moment, and gifts the subject with the opportunity to see how they inhabit their lives in periods of transition. The more we look at life in the light of loss, the more we cherish what's around us–either because it's lasting, or because it isn't.
You have been photographing "care" for over thirty years, do you tire of it?
Photography is a form of spiritual practice––practice as in anything we do again and again to deepen and sanctify our lives. And by this work, I am blessed. Photographing the face of care illuminates my life with the beauty of the fragile heart. I am profoundly touched at gow we give in the midst of suffering, how we forgive, and how we tend to each other's wounds. This practice is about being present in the midst of love and suffering. It is an immensely ennobling privilege.
In the end, no matter how embattled our lives, we need one another as family, we need each other's hearts and songs to help one another find the way. I committed myself to illustrating this message, and wish I have more than a lifetime to do it.
I noticed in your books, you don't mix words with photographs...
I have a deep respect for words, words are potent. And as an amateur poet, and passionate collector of poems, I am touched by the power of words. However, as a visual artist, I engage the viewer with visual language. I want the spectator to process and be seduced only with visual information. On rare occasions, words are necessary to aid the viewer.
Man's original language is visual, ancient man communicated through pictures first. Cave men painted their walls to communicate with the spirit world, and their paintings served a far more serious purpose than mere decoration. In making a likeness of an animal, they meant to bring the animal itself within his grasp, and in portraying it as wounded, they killed the animal’s vital spirit. These caves served as sanctuaries, and the paintings were part of a magical ritual to insure a successful hunt.
The essence of art is symbolic, it comes from uncharted territories in the artist's psyche, and best left alone for each onlooker to grasp what they can from that same place in themselves.
What common thread do you see in your personal projects?
My two earliest collections, 1st Portfolio, and Hand Tinted Work were simply visual exercises, while everything else fits into two categories. The first category is defined by a spiritual humanity, where the images make reference to a higher power. In the second category are essays that reveal beauty in imperfect, broken, or discarded objects.
Tell me about the projects that show broken things in a new light.
Grace is a rich, multi-dimensional word. People usually associate it with the ballerina, but I wanted to explore it from the opposite direction. In Inner Grace, I looked at grace as it abides in the multi-handicapped person. I focused on the inherent spirituality of disability, and examined the aesthetics of twisted limbs. In the natural world, we stop and marvel at the trunk of a tree that is gnarled with cancer, but we quickly pass by a human being who has a deformity. There is a photo in Inner Grace of a teen in a wheelchair that I took at the Museum of Natural History. His twisted left arm is raised in excitement, and behind it, are deer's antlers. The photograph is asking, is the beauty of his deformity any less than the deer's?
In Street Poems, I explore the haiku-like character of the white paint that is used in pedestrian crosswalks. Random broken fragments of paint, oil spills, salt deposits, and tar texture, combine to form a poetic aesthetic. After the Rain are photographs of discarded, broken umbrellas, which have been transformed, with selective hand coloring, into butterflies, moths, and flowers. Tompkins People, unveils the common humanity of an indigent population who took refuge in a local New York City park. The Tea Bags is a metaphor for the human life cycle.
When you begin a personal project, do you just plunge in?
I began working on Inner Grace after Geraldo Rivera, then a young television reporter, aired a television exposé on Willowbrook State School. Willowbrook was an institution in upstate New York where multihandicapped children were warehoused. The documentary successfully exposed the inhumane conditions these children lived under. The effects of the broadcast eventually led to the Willowbrook Consent Decree, which brought handicapped children into the classroom, and the closing of Willowbrook State School.
Administrators of institutions I approached did not want to open their doors to me since I was proposing a photo-project at the heals of Heraldo's report. I persisted by meeting parents of these children, and volunteered for three months, before being allowed to photograph at my first location.
With Tompkins People, an essay made in a city park where illicit activity was going on, I won hearts by giving away photographs, being consistent, and patient. During the two years of photography, I kept a 5" x 7" album in my pocket. This small album became significant to the park population. Since most of them were vagabonds, and were estranged from, or did not have families, the album became their "family" album. I was often called over by someone new whom I had not photographed, to review the collection, and ultimately I would be invited to photograph them on my next visit.
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