Spectacles and Retrospectives

My mother was always gracious enough to let my camera accompany us on her numerous medical journeys. in the ten plus years we walked those roads, I had multiple conversations with outsiders who looked upon this as disrespectful or inappropriate. Mom and I both knew that she had a story to share. I always felt that when the time was right, the images would begin to speak for themselves. And for her. Her story, her history, her journey was one that was so intricate and complex words often failed to convey the experience authentically while simultaneously retaining her humanity.  What follows is a short documentary project from May 2013. This is the first time these images have been outside the hands of trusted friends and confidants. In sharing these, we begin another journey. All images copyrighted. 

This was written about two weeks before Christmas this year. Just now getting around to posting ...  I’ve gotten used to bad news at Christmas time. It never fails that what society inflicts upon us as “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” always enters my life with both triumph and heartache. There are the usually family issues that everyone encounters: there are traffic-jammed highways, there are atrocious squeaky Christmas tunes “sung” by various woodland creatures. Illness always invites itself to the party. Some years we have ushered in the birth of Hope gathered around small dimly lit trees in ICU rooms – a place where there is noise and hurry. And pain and stillness. A place where the concept of Emmanuel becomes concrete. Other times, we have spent Christmas Day in the ER. Other times hospital season arrives just in time to watch fireworks from the hospital-parking garage. This year, we are stomping on fires and holding our breath. It hur...

Yesterday, I had an angry day. A day filled with so much emotion and pain that I spent the day in a broken, onion-skin-fragile state. Today, I was in recovery –survival mode. I let myself sleep in. I ate cinnamon rolls for breakfast at lunchtime. I watched a Red Box movie and got lost in the sensory experience of folding towels fresh from the dryer. I didn’t get dressed until dinnertime and I didn’t leave my house until 7:00pm. Yesterday was such a strange experience. It was like having a fight with a lover while on vacation. Enraged simultaneously with passion and frustration, with love and contempt, with devotion and confusion. Fight all you want, you’re still going to be forced to sleep in the same bed and continue your journey when you awake. You can even make-up and move on. It’s still a relationship changer. As yesterday ended, I showered, brushed my teeth, took my medicine and crawled into bed with myself… and my misfiring immune system.   I have no enlight...

I process the world in which I live in words and images. I have forever been fascinated with the confining and liberating aspect of language. A way in which I over come this is by photographing my world. I photograph what I see, what I live and where I go. Because My life is what it is

I am an avid reader of Consumer Reports. For three main reasons: 1.) I enjoy reading how human beings quantify and classify human-made products. Typically the products reviewed within the pages of this publication are items of luxury, the focus of the (perceived) American Dream. Televisions, stereos, Mp3 players, vacuums cleaners, refrigerators - these are the things that are dissected in Consumer Reports. These are the things that belong. 2.) I feel that as a person with monetary power (a power that only a minority of the world possesses) I have a responsibility to myself and to the larger global society to be informed when I make a purchase, especially a large one. 3.) My Aunt Jody read Consumer Reports religiously. As well as Reader's Digest (I read that, too. I have since I was about 9 years old). She was one of the most fascinating characters I have ever encountered. Reading what she read makes sense. Having qulified that this is a publication that I enjoy and...

• I am among the generation of kids that got the standardized talks in elementary school to educate us to ‘stranger danger’ in order to make us aware of the potential of kidnapping. I remember faces on milk cartons. • When I was in kindergarten, we became involved in the Gulf War. I was very young, but raised in a house where current events were openly discussed. I knew war was bad and that people violently died. And I knew that not all the people that died in war were the bad guys.   • When I was in the fourth grade (and living in Oklahoma) the Murrah Federal Building was bombed and 168 lives were taken. • When I was in the sixth grade, there was a bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. What should have been a celebration of national pride became fear-driven-chaos and embarrassment.  •  In the eighth grade, there was a premeditated mass shooting at Columbine High School. People my age were killing each other. • On picture day my junior year of high school, I stood in l...

My mom was our primary caretaker and lived (and continues to live) with severe gastrointestinal illness. The human experience centers around food. The focus on food becomes more intense during the winter holidays.  My experience with food has been different for as long as I can remember. My mother is forever on special diets that vary in substance, nutritional content, naturally ingested and/or artificially administered. In my world it it "normal". Even as a child, I was preceptive to the fact that this was not "normal" to others. Others (those who do not have experience with gastrointestinal  disease or illness) are uncomfortable with things out of their realm of experience. They often react by staring or doing a number of things that make the experience of food a strained emotional event, something that the breaking of bread (whatever that is to you) should never be. This is not to say that questions can not be asked. They can. And they should. As with all convers...