Archive for the Ethics category
Quiet Strength
by Nathan Clendenin on February 10th, 2006
I worked with sister Margaret today. As I hoped, she needed to spend time at the hospice (instead of in the office building). I am impressed with her quiet strength, which she displays through leadership of her staff and caring for the patients with grace. I photographed her working for awhile, and did an audio interview. She spoke to me in English, unlike many of the other interviews. However, I will likely still have a voiceover for her because the room was unavoidably noisy (a constant beeping in the background and patients moaning a bit). Plus that will remain consistent with the other stories. I didn’t have to ask but one question to get all the information I wanted to cover. I photographed her working with patients a bit more, and she reminded me of the ones we had visited earlier in the week that were now here. One of the patients, a man with HIV who had an usuable arm due to a stroke, look much much better in the hospice. Another woman, looked worse. Margaret started to ask me what else I wanted, at which point I realized it was time to leave. I didn’t feel unwelcome, but she started to do things for me just so I could photograph, and so I stopped. There wasn’t much else to photograph anyway, otherwise I would have attempted to explain that I couldn’t photograph posed events. Instead I dropped it and started wrapping up. We had a nice goodbye and I could tell she was happy to have worked with me.
Uncle’s Orphans
by Nathan Clendenin on February 9th, 2006
I went back to visit the Uncle Orphans today. I hoped they would get used to my cameras and stop posing for me, but alas such was not the case (as Vincent predicted). Even after two hours, most of the children were still posing for me and fighting for my attention. I made some nice shots though, of the portrait variety. Instead of getting discouraged, which I started to feel, I decided the only way to tell this story is to call it something like “Portraits of Poverty”. I don’t know if it will end up in the final product, as the link to AIDS is uncertain. But the link to poverty is so strong. I’ll have to see what Pat thinks. It makes a nice fifth story, one that is a little different as a series of portraits.
A Day with Granny
by Nathan Clendenin on February 3rd, 2006
I worked mainly with Granny today at the house. I felt a bit awkward at first, esp. with the older children like Kate and Mongese. But I decided to just sit with them for awhile, not taking pictures, to allow them to get used to me. One of the babies also took a while to stop crying when he saw me. I didn’t have much of an idea about what shots to take except that I needed interaction with Granny and the kids. I asked God to help me see that story how He sees it. All the children, except Given the oldest grandson, were home and interacting with Granny quite a lot. Many other children from around the neighborhood came by also and I struggled with how to answer them about my project. I didn’t want to reveal anything about HIV for fear of stigmatizing the family, but at the same time I don’t want to be dishonest or perpetuating the silence about the disease. I ended up telling them I was doing a project on people in Mamelodi. Mostly these children and other curious passersby just wanted their photo taken, which I did happily.
Faced with a Challenge
by Nathan Clendenin on February 1st, 2006
Was up early for morning prayer, arrived in Mamelodi at 5am. After prayer I moved to Selina’s house where she was bathing the children. Then I headed over to Granny’s and took some photos of her and a few even with the grandchildren, which has been hard. Showing her interacting with them, caring for them. Visually, her story is difficult. On paper it’s a perfect story. An old woman, who might die in the next 5 years, caring for 9 orphaned grandchildren on her measly 800 rand/month pension. As she says, “I’m pulling with one gear.” But visually, it is difficult because there is not much emotion in the house, she doesn’t interact very much with the children, two of the girls, one of which is pregnant and due any day, don’t totally feel comfortable when I’m around and usually go to another room, plus her house is not very run down, compared with many other Mamelodi homes I’ve been in. I am faced with the challenge of choosing this difficult story, versus another story involving a family of 15 or so living in a very bad house that leaks, has only 2 twin beds and no money or food. This story is much more about poverty than AIDS though, because they are orphans but there’s no way of telling for sure if their parents (there are two sets involved, so there are brother/sisters and cousins living together) dies from AIDS. Most of the neighbors say that the mother of one set of parents committed suicide because she had it (back in the mid 90’s when it was very taboo to talk about it even). But I won’t be able to have any of the children tell me that. So they are indeed orphans, struggling to the fullest, and their living conditions are very visually easy to portray, but it’s not a clear AIDS related thing. It is likely that some of the children have AIDS from sleeping around, and there have been rapes also from men breaking in at night, but I don’t think anyone has been tested and nobody is sick right now at least. My hunch is to hang out with that family just a bit and see if I can talk about HIV at all and see what they say. I also don’t want to give up on Granny and her orphans, just because it’s a difficult story. I think I can shoot both and decide when I get home, and maybe even use both, emphasizing poverty on one and orphans who will be left without support in the Granny case.