Almost two years ago to the day, I made a trip to Bolivia and spent three and a half months in a medium-sized city in the Andes working in a small orphanage. There were fifteen to twenty orphans there at any given time, all under the age of five, and about half of those under the age of two. During my time there, I wrote about my experience on this blog, and a woman discovered the post and contacted me from Denmark; she was to be the adopting mother of one of the children under the care of this orphanage. “Did I know her son?,” she asked, and “Was he healthy?” “Clean?” I told her yes, yes, and yes, nervous about revealing too much before she had this son in her hands, knowing adoption is complicated and a lot can go wrong.
She was informed a few weeks later that she would not be able to adopt after all, after waiting over a year for this child, and I felt both relieved for my non-disclosure, but also a real sadness, knowing that both a child and capable parents were losing out on forming a connection during a formative time in the little boy’s life. When I left Bolivia in late May of 2007, the little boy was still at the orphanage, now around 15 months old.
Forty-eight hours ago I got another email, this one from the Netherlands. A woman was happy to report she and her husband had newly adopted a son–their son–and believed I may have known him as a younger baby. It was the same boy–the one who wasn’t adopted before–and he is now in a new home, with parents, happy and healthy and much bigger and walking and talking. She asked if I might have any photos, images that might help explain and show a little of his three year history, so last night I searched my hard drives and found about a dozen pictures of the little boy I knew for three months, trying to walk, sitting on a swing, laughing, crawling, and growing older, little by little.
I have never quite known what to make of the images I captured in Bolivia. In many ways bringing my camera to foreign turf taught me a lot about the photographer I am, and the photographer I would like to be. It made me realize how comfortable I am shooting in New York; how easy it is to wield a large camera in this city; how a foreign country welcomes a camera with different eyes and ears, and how intimacy — in knowing a place and its people, is a task that takes years and years. After posting just a few of the images from that trip, I’ve long tucked those photos away and not looked them until just last night.
Last night when I sent those dozen photos to the new parents of the adopted son who I knew two years before they had the chance to, I felt my photos were valuable and indispensible to someone whom I will never know. That I will likely never see this child, meet his parents, or know the life they will have, is only a small aside. That I could help his parents learn more about the son because I happened to know him for 3 short months of his life, is a huge personal reward to have come of that trip, despite it being two years after the fact.
N.B. [Detroit + SXSW edition]
1. I’m hopping on a plane to Detroit tomorrow morning to see a friend and make some pictures. Please let me know if there are spots you recommend in the Detroit area for food, sight-seeing, secret exploration, etc. All I know so far is that we are definitely going feather bowling and that I’m quite excited.
2. My friend Josephine’s (half of the banjo/accordion duo known as Baccordio) music video, Where Are You Going, Elena? will be debuting this week at SXSW on March 13, 18, and 21st. See here for more info. (Full disclosure: I make a split second cameo).
3. Additionally, Ms. Jen Bekman will be speaking on a panel, Curating the Crowd-Sourced World on Saturday (14th).
4. And, also at SXSW, Dennis will be talking, using, promoting, demonstrating, and getting people excited about Foursquare.
5. Unrelated, but awesome: Character Project (11 photographers–including Mary Ellen Mark, Eric Ogden, and Richard Renaldi set out to document the character of America).
March 17th, 2009 at 12:31 am
That’s an amazing story, YP!