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I was working on a documentary project about a section of Route 11 that spans New York State when I stopped at Edward and Mary LaBrie’s dairy farm in Jefferson County, about twenty-five miles from the Canadian border. During that first visit, in 1985, I resolved to do a separate documentary project on this family. Procrastinator that I am, it wasn’t until the spring of 1998 that I finally set out to record their vanishing way of life.
By Gary WaltsJanuary 2002The day I started photographing her, Evelyn was walking with three dogs and two cats through the yard at her family home, a three-story former girls’ academy on the historic register. Although she had once worked in Manhattan, she had long ago come back to North Carolina to care for her parents near the end of their lives.
By Louanne WatleyNovember 2001I have been photographing my family for more than thirty years. The pictures here are of my mother, Rose, and my younger brother, Dennis. My father, Sal, died in 1991.
By John MilisendaMay 2001After a lifetime of observing, photographing, and contemplating the behavior of many kinds of animals, domesticated, wild, and captive, I haven’t a shred of a doubt that they entertain thoughts, express feelings, and possess spirit or soul, and that each one is unique.
By Karen Tweedy-HolmesApril 2001I did not know, for example, that in 1950 the Chinese government initiated a series of invasions that, within a decade, would result in the occupation of the whole of Tibet and the eventual death of more than 1.2 million Tibetans — about one-sixth of the total population — due to political persecution, imprisonment, torture, and famine.
By Stephen R. HarrisonJune 2000I am still haunted by the memory of the phone call from my mother telling me in a trembling voice that my sister Joanne, still in her thirties, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Following a prolonged, heroic battle to survive, she was eventually to die from that disease. Two decades later, I anxiously faced a surgeon in an antiseptic hospital waiting room as he uttered the dreaded words “Your wife has breast cancer.”
By Art MyersMarch 2000Since 1994, I have been photographing the landscape and inhabitants of the Southside, a Latino neighborhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I began by making portraits of teenagers playing handball and basketball in the schoolyards. I was drawn to the mixture of arrogance and vulnerability in their faces, the naiveté and feigned maturity of their posturing.
By Vincent CianniFebruary 2000I was working at a youth center, introducing seven- to eleven-year-olds to photography, when someone told me about a carnival-supply store that sold cases of toy cameras for about a quarter apiece. They were called Banner cameras and were made of black and turquoise plastic. I had to tape up the backs to help the film advance.
By Bruce HorowitzOctober 1999Gary Walts had many occasions to photograph his father, Aubrey Guy Walts, who supported a family of twelve by working as a machinist for the New Jersey National Guard. In particular, Gary documented his father’s deteriorating mental health over a two-year period in the mideighties. When Aubrey Walts took his own life in 1987, Gary filed away the undeveloped negatives and didn’t retrieve them until ten years later, after a colleague’s death brought back memories.
June 1999In the early nineties, I left my job as a civil-rights attorney to devote my energy to photography. Having two young children at the time, I naturally began to record and investigate their lives with the camera. This quickly evolved into an exploration of the sweetness and sorrow of family life in general.
February 1999Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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