First portfolios and now photography? It seems there is a dark theme this week on the blog… which is maybe appropriate in this strange, dark time for freelance photography.
In all seriousness, I wanted to share and comment on a tearsheet that finally reached me yesterday from a story I shot for ZEIT Magazin earlier this year. Abraham Biggs committed suicide to an online audience (who taunted him and did not call authorities until hours later) in Nov. 2008 via his webcam and a bottle of pills. Immediately upon reading the story in the local papers I was both dumbstruck be the senseless death of a young man and deeply moved by his actions as a perverse extension of the interconnectedness and alienation of the internet (connecting everyone and no one at the same time).
A few months later I got a call from ZEIT picture editor Michael Biedowicz asking if I was interested in working with them on a cover story about the death. I immediately said yes but also intuitively felt that it was nearly impossible that any of my pictures might even superficially scratch the surface of the tragedy and family’s pain. It wasn’t that I didn’t have faith in photography, but it just didn’t seem to be the right medium to grasp the threads of Abraham’s crisis. And so it’s said very clearly, I did not feel that journalism was probing into a tragedy needlessly… talking about his death could only help, even if painfully, people come to terms with the circumstances of his life and family’s loss.
Feeling all of this I met with writer Annabel Wahba and visited with Abraham’s family. I was asked by the magazine but needn’t have been to only use simple cameras and no strobes. I met them as a person first, and asked their permission to bring my cameras into their home. I didn’t shoot any pictures at all until I had met everyone and sat with them for a long while. I wanted to understand something about them, to make this access mean something. I made my pictures though, thoroughly and with professionalism. I didn’t take too few or too many, but I made sure I satisfied what my client needed to attempt to tell of his loss.
After dark I eventually said my goodbyes, especially to his mother who was incredibly warm and generous, it was just written on her face. A few days later I was asked to make portraits of some of Abraham’s friends as well, but the only one who would agree to be photographed did not seem like much of a friend and I felt even worse about his life and loneliness. Hopefully there had been someone real to talk to about whatever he was feeling.
The main access for the story was at the father’s home in Abraham’s room where he took his own life. I was both deeply relieved and very upset that I was not allowed access to photograph that room or his father or father’s home at all. I was still sent to photograph his father’s neighborhood but after one quick pass by the western FL suburb gated community disaster that it was, I told the magazine that I refused to shoot anything more of it. There was nothing of Abraham there… the story lived somewhere else, somewhere I’d never reach.
As in anything else sometimes our ability to connect fails us. Often it’s a matter of access. Sometimes it’s a matter the story itself, or disliking the subject, or not being able to really engage, or something else entirely. It doesn’t matter at all in the scheme of things that my photography in some German magazine failed to really bring Abraham’s story and what it represents to life. I’m not sorry that I tried and I do think it was important. These questions are important to think about though, especially at a time when the heart of what connects photography and journalism appears so imperiled coincidentally at the moment in mass medium history has created such a worldwide need for information and illustration, and that is what this note is aimed towards.
Ultimately the picture that stops my heart is the poor one of a young man dead on his bed seen from a webcam (in how many darkened rooms across the world?) that was used on ZEIT’s cover (actually they had 2 covers, one on top of the other, both with tiny images of Abraham). From what I understand, subsequent frames after the picture used on the cover show a policeman (who knocked down the locked door) walk in, check his body, and rip the camera out. The image that I remember now however is the sight of a loved son on the crowded wall of his mother’s house; images of Abraham in military uniform, and as an energetic, outgoing kid. And I’ll also remember the sounds of his mother breaking down while brushing her daughter’s hair, stung by the memory of their loss. Maybe these words can pick up where my pictures left off.
thanks for this poignant post. the images say a lot, but paired with your words about your experience, they’re so much more powerful.
His public yet lonesome death is so inexpressibly sad. Your photographs are sensitive and human, they do not repeat the unconcerned curiosity of the public tragedy.
Thanks Kendrick & Luke
Modern mass communications can be a wonderful way of connecting with others. But they can also swamp you, flood over you with a relentless speed of information and wash away any sense of empathy. It’s far too easy to say something crass, hide behind the anonymity of an avatar, hurt those who are most vunerable and shirk any responsibility for the consequences no matter how dire and tragic. That’s simply indefensible, and shameful. It’s patently obvious from your photos and words he mattered a great deal to his family, and that his loss is deeply felt by them.