Artist Statement

Since 2001, I have been working to change the imagery of aging, illness and dying by combining my background as a Professor of Sociology with my photography.  I left my tenured full professorship to focus on work combining photographs and text.  I believe this to be the most effective vehicle to open people’s eyes, literally and figuratively, providing a better way to help them “face” issues that are generally avoided.  Since then I have directed my energies to the creation of photographic projects that challenge stereotypical conceptions of the aged, the infirm, and those in the terminal stages of life.

This body of work began at a municipal old age home in Mexico.  I then documented a person-centered approach to Alzheimer’s care in the United States.  My photographs and text appeared as a book in 2004, Alive with Alzheimer’s (University of Chicago Press).  The German edition (Alzheimers und Lebensqualitat) was published in 2006 in conjunction with a three-year traveling exhibition in Germany.

End of life care is a global issue.  The work presented here was made in the United States, and is part of a four-country series on this topic. The palliative care approach is being adopted increasingly in industrialized nations where most deaths are in hospitals, where death is “managed” rather than a natural part of the life experience.  Many people are unaware that there is an alternative to the strictly biomedical, curative approach to terminal care.  The palliative care approach is also being adopted in developing countries, where many people die with insufficient pain management and insufficient social and financial support.  Important shifts are taking place in various places to put palliative care at the heart of public health programs.  Much still remains to be done to increase both public awareness of the issues and to provide healthcare professionals with palliative care knowledge and training.  Photography can be an important element of this teaching and training.

Over the last three years, I created a large archive of images of end of life care from Japan, India, France and the United States, some with the sponsorship of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Silverado Hospice (Houston, TX and Escondido, CA). 

My goal is to show how the experience of dying can be enriched emotionally and intellectually for patients and for family, friends, and caregivers.  Mother Theresa said as she cared for the dying in Calcutta, "We cannot do great things, only little things with great love." “Alive at the End of Life shows some of the little things that are being done with great love by those who are engaged in the hospice/palliative care movement.

The project focuses on ways to maintain human dignity in the face of the natural processes of aging, serious illness, cognitive challenges, and death.  I believe that being defeated by the ravages of age and illness is not solely the result of biological degeneration but the failure of contemporary social and cultural institutions.  In recognition of my work, the University of Houston College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences awarded me the 2007 John P. McGovern Lectureship in Family, Health and Human Values.

I know from my own experience that few of us are adequately prepared to deal with the difficulties of having family members and friends with cancer, dementia, heart disease and other chronic illnesses such as ALS and end stage HIV/AIDS.  My photographs and accompanying text offer a symbolic journey through the end of life by showing those whose lives and deaths have been eased by the best of programs.  Sebastião Salgado wrote about his work on migrations: “I hope that the person who comes into my show and the person who comes out are not quite the same.”  My goal is to change minds and hearts, which is the mandate of social documentary photography.  My aim for this work is to be a catalyst for education, cultural understanding, and social action, extending the quality of life until its very end.