a few months back i had a shoot that took place at wally’s barbershop in alta dena, california. ricky, above, is wally’s son, and helps to manage the shop. he wasn’t supposed to be our subject. we were actually there to photograph a doctor. it was a story about community health outreach being done in barbershops in an effort to educate people about high blood pressure and hypertension. it was a good story, a worthwhile story, about something that was intended to help people who normally wouldn’t seek help themselves.

the picture we were there to make was very different from this one, but i kept liking this great corner of the shop. and ricky, there to help us out on a day when the barbershop was normally closed, just fit so well there. once the job was done and the doctor was happy and off to lunch, ricky let us stay a bit longer and take his portrait. he even moved his deer head trophy to the corner for us. ricky killed the deer himself, in the mountains above alta dena, with a crossbow. as much as i hate the idea of hunting for myself, the thought of ricky dressed in camouflage hiking through the mountains with a crossbow. . . that’s pretty badass. that’s our next picture, for sure.

sometimes you find great people just hanging around the edges of photo shoots. i try to take advantage of this, and their kindnesses, whenever i can. i’ve done lots of pictures of security guards and janitors and executive assistants and passerby who had nothing to do with the assignment but just looked great and were curious enough to participate. often that turns around a day. it reminds me, sometimes, how great it feels to make a picture of someone with no ulterior motive, no intended purpose, no point other than to share something with a person who normally never gets to have that kind of experience. i am very grateful to them all.

thanks, ricky.

losing a child is an unimaginable grief. when it happens it seems to be against the very rules of the game. we are supposed to be survived by our children. that’s just the way the world works, isn’t it? the things that parents do to come to terms with such a loss are as varied as the ways in which death can take us. for bob, a family practice physician, he tried to cope with his son’s death by getting on a bicycle.

in july of 2009 eric okerblom was riding his bike down a straight, quiet road east of santa maria. a sophomore at berkeley, he was training for the school’s cycling team. a car driven by a young woman who happened to be a former high school classmate of eric’s hit and killed him. the accident was avoidable. it was during the day. the road was straight. there was no traffic. eric was not riding haphazardly. there were no obstructions. subpoenas of the girl’s phone records indicate that she had been sending and receiving text messages shortly before the accident, though she never officially admitted to being distracted while driving. she pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter – a misdemeanor. three years probation and one hundred hours of community service.

it is our nature, in the face of inexplicable awfulness, to try to find a reason for things. pure randomness is sometimes more terrible than even the smallest explanations. faced with losing themselves wholly in grief, bob and his wife, eilene, went on a crusade to bring awareness to the issue of distracted driving. they started a foundation, named after their son. they petitioned lawmakers to enact tougher laws prohibiting texting while driving. of course, setting up a foundation and writing letters will only get you so far. at the end of the day, eric was still gone, and the feelings of loss and powerlessness still had to be dealt with.

not satisfied simply with the activities of his foundation, bob thought he must do something more, something to bring his message to more people, something to possibly help save the lives of others. he decided to take a two month long bike ride, alone, across the country. he started in san diego in february, and finished 54 days later in st. augustine, florida. along the way he did many interviews, met with legislators, gathered supporters, and kept a daily blog. he said the trip is something eric would’ve wanted him to do, something he hoped would make his son proud of him.

at the beginning of the trip bob wrote:

The spirituality, harmony, values, and structure of my former life have been swept away by the killing of my 19 year old son, Eric. I am left adrift on a sea of dark currents and noxious winds. Without direction or destination, I wander the outer circles of hell. Although surrounded by loving family, friends, and community, I am alone in a lonely place. As I begin this journey to honor my son, I hope to also find some way to emerge from this abyss. So from now until the finish, I will pedal for the dead.

meeting bob just a few days before he left on his trip i was struck by how determined he was, by how tough he must be. i doubted the effectiveness of the endeavor he was about to undertake, but i also realized that this was never really about the bike ride. it might not really have been about raising awareness of distracted driving, either. it was about a father feeling like simply doing something must be better than doing nothing. when no other glue will work some men hold themselves together with action. using purpose to provide (promote?) healing.

i dare say we have all made dangers of ourselves on the road in one way or another. we’re more and more connected to our gadgets, moment to moment than ever before – certainly i am no exception to this. have i texted while driving? i surely have. i am as addicted to the beeps and chimes and buzzes of my iphone as anyone could be. now, though, perhaps more than before, if something urgently commands my attention i try to pull over to the side of the road. when i get a text and the red light doesn’t last quite long enough, i think of bob, and eilene, and eric. my pulling over won’t bring eric back, or give any peace to bob’s life, but i think he would be happy to know that his efforts and experiences have had an effect, no matter how small.

if you stop to think about it there are a million little coincidences every day that serve to either keep us safe or put us at risk. i have been involved with death far more in my capacity as a photographer than in my own personal life away from the camera. in this, i suppose, i count myself lucky. still, i find it difficult to photograph someone and not feel some tie to their life, especially to the people for whom i get to visit repeatedly and get to know quite closely. the delineation of making pictures blurs more than slightly after a while.

when i left bob and eilene i worried that his cross country ride would simply be a band-aid on his grief. something to distract him for a while. i worried about what would happen when the ride was done, when he was back home, when the momentum of activism and energy had subsided. i worried for eilene, home alone while bob attempted to pedal his grief away.

on april 22nd bob wrote on his blog:

I conclude this travel unrestored. My God has remained silent and elusive. Completing good works will not adjudicate Eric’s killing. There can be no happy ending to this story. As the many hundreds of roadside memorials stand testament, there can never be harmony after the loss of a child.

Some injuries heal completely without residual or scar. Others heal without residual, but leave a disfiguring scar as a reminder. A few injuries aren’t fatal, but linger and smolder,never to resolve completely. One must learn to live with them and not to be dominated by them. My challenge is to learn to live with this injury, but not become the injury.

usually on this site i post photos of people with an accompanying caption. something describing in a few words who they are and what they do. i struggled over this with bob. it’s easy to label him as a grieving father, but that does him no service going into the future. in the end, whether it’s his grief that makes him get up in the morning, day after day, that makes him care for the families of others, for his surviving children and his wife, or not, it doesn’t matter. i’m not a parent – not yet -  but i have the notion that once you become a father you are a father in every way, every manner and every aspect of your life. that feeling supersedes everything else. you may also be a doctor, or a husband, but you are a father first and foremost. and if your son is taken from you you no more stop being a father than they stop being your son.

some photo shoots happen so quickly i don’t have time to figure out much about the people in front of the camera. very often a shoot occurs when the story is not quite finalized, and i rarely get to see a draft of anything before the subject and i share our sparse few minutes together. in an ideal world the photograph would be free of distractions, there wouldn’t be schedules weighing down on everyone, no handlers nearby, no nervous people hoping not to ruffle feathers. in an ideal world i’d get the chance to spend actual quality time with each subject before, during and after our task of making pictures. sadly, the ideal world is a far off place. in some situations – increasingly common in the media-savvy world that absolutely everyone seems to inhabit these days – you only have a scant few minutes, and any talk not directly pertaining to the logistics of making the picture happen (and happen fast) fall by the wayside out of necessity.

that being said, i’m afraid i don’t know much about LP and his wife, bobbi. i know LP was an accountant, now retired, that he enjoys fishing, and that he somehow didn’t seem to mind much standing on a piece of steel in the middle of some grass, even if it made everyone else around him nervous.

sometimes i get pegged for the tough jobs. i have a handful of clients for whom i fall into a certain niche; i’m the go-to guy for stories that require sensitivity in handling, stories that involve advocacy for patients or those in some distress. i’ve even been referred to as “humanistic” by some editors. frankly, i’m very pleased to be thought of this way. i’ve always found myself drawn to portraiture as a humanistic endeavor – i mean, how could it not be? i’m also very drawn to the idea of approaching and treating subjects very simply, without much in the way; a minimum of the unnecessarily stylized or produced touches you often see in other photo shoots.

i was asked by TIME magazine to illustrate a story written by karl taro greenfeld. karl was writing about his younger brother, noah. noah is 42 years old and a low-functioning autistic. the article was to be an adaptation/excerpt from karl’s book, “boy alone: a brother’s memoir“ about growing up with noah and the idea of eventually becoming his brother’s sole steward.

noah lives in a small, somewhat run-down house in los angeles. he’s kept company constantly by at least one nurse. noah is unable to take care of himself in any meaningful way; he can’t clean himself, cook himself a meal or even dress himself. noah doesn’t really talk, either, though he’s constantly vocalizing, making a series of sharp, often loud grunts and other sounds. noah bangs his hands and feet against the floor almost continually, making noises, and sometimes even hits his head against things seemingly on purpose.

when i accepted the job it came with a wide range of immediate restrictions: no auxiliary lighting whatsoever. no assistant. no tripod. noah might refuse to be photographed at all. noah could try to grab or bite me. i was told noah reacts best to very tall, very large men. perhaps he feels intimidated and that works to calm him. however, i’m 5’7″ and quite thin. oh well.

i was nervous going in, but also kind of excited. you don’t often get a glimpse of what life is like for someone like noah. we all hear quite a lot about autism in children, but then people tend to forget that there is no getting better from a very severe case like noah’s, and they tend to lose interest when the sufferers grow up, stop being cute and start to feel like more of a burden. i was also very excited to work from the set of restrictions, photographically speaking. part of the challenge would be in making noah comfortable with me, part would be in getting something that looks good without any control over the situation or any ability to direct the subject.

i met karl at the house on a sunday morning. we weren’t there very long, but karl seemed to think that noah took quite well to me. i shot very quickly, trying to be quiet and non-threatening. i laid down on the floor with noah. i don’t know if karl would admit it, but noah seemed happy to see him, and didn’t even seem to mind me all that much. karl claims we got him on a good day.

read the article here. the issue is out today, may 18th.

my thanks to karl, and to martha, crary and dietmar at TIME mag.

still, the plumbers were nice enough to let me take their pictures during the lunch break. i managed to talk nine (out of twelve) of them into doing it. we had a short window before the sun came out in full force in my driveway and ruined the light, but they all seemed to have a really good time. when the foreman/inspector came out today he was talking about how all the guys went back to the office talking about their pictures. that’s really a great thing, i’m always glad when i get to do that for people who don’t ordinarily get this kind of attention.

thanks guys. and the water pressure’s great.

here is: hugo, carlos, leo #1, leo #2, giovanni, rex, ken, douglas and jose.