Kristen Schmid

It is rewarding to photograph people I am proud to share with the world.

In the last several weeks I’ve photographed three women confronting serious illness in themselves or in loved ones. Their reactions are all very different, but each woman is using her gifts to help better treat or prevent disease in others.

In Peoria, Claudia Garrido-Revilla is a Fox Trial Finder Ambassador. She educates people about participating in clinical trials studying Parkinson’s. Revilla has Parkinson’s herself, and keeps a stack of informational materials in her kitchen so that she can always take some with her when she leaves the house. She also leads Team Fox, which raises money for Parkinson’s research, at Peoria Academy. Medication keeps Revilla’s symptoms under control, but she wants to be part of the effort to find a cure.

WSJ article

On May 3, I photographed at the Illinois State Capitol for the University of Chicago Medical Center as two moms, Laura Lutarewych (black suit) and Sheila Quirke (red sweater), and Dr. John Cunningham testified before the Illinois House Revenue and Finance Committee about the need for greater children’s cancer research funding. If passed, House Bill 4211 would allow taxpayers to donate money to The Childhood Cancer Research Fund through a charitable deduction check-off box on their state tax form. Lutarewych spearheaded HB4211. She and her four-year-old daughter Atia are both cancer survivors. Lutarewych testified, “Currently, childhood cancer receives about 4% of the national cancer research budget.” She pointed out that when life spans are taken into consideration, under the current allotment to pediatric cancer research, a child’s life is valued at $940 a year, and an adult’s life is valued at over $10,000 per year.

Quirke’s daughter, Donna, died from a brain tumor at age four. Quirke testified: “Every single treatment decision that was made was a shot in the dark, an educated guess, a hope, and a wish.  The thing that failed Donna was the science.  Her cancer was simply better equipped than her doctors.”

After their presentation, the group met Governor Pat Quinn and toured his office, and was interviewed for the local television news.

Happy Mother’s Day, ladies. Keep up the good work.

It takes courage to begin a book with “Is a pen a metaphorical penis?” as Susan Gubar did in 1979 in The Madwoman in the Attic, her widely acclaimed and groundbreaking book with writing partner Sandra Gilbert. It takes even more courage to write about your own serious illness and its debilitating treatment. I photographed Professor Gubar in her Bloomington, Ind., home for an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education about her new book, Memoir of a Debulked Woman: Enduring Ovarian Cancer.

My grandmother never would have called herself a feminist, but I thought about her a lot as I took these pictures. My grandmother’s deadly cancer symptoms went untreated and unrecognized for over a year. Her doctor told her she was just depressed.

I talked to my dad the night before the portrait session, and was surprised to hear that he thought my grandmother died from ovarian cancer. He wasn’t sure. I thought it was liver cancer. The ignorance and silence about what happened inside my grandmother’s body is an example of why an outspoken book like Gubar’s is necessary.

As a parent trying to make good education decisions for my own children, I respect the parents, some who don’t speak English, who trek to the Illinois State Capitol with The Ounce of Prevention Fund to ask state legislators to preserve early childhood programs. Teachers and early childhood professionals also gathered to advocate at the Capitol in Springfield on April 17, 2012. The Ounce strives to narrow the academic achievement gap and promotes programs that help the development of vulnerable young children.

You can vote in a residential garage and get home-baked treats along with your ballot outside Springfield, Ill. You can purchase the latest community cookbook when you choose your candidate in Dawson, Ill. You can get a warm greeting from poll volunteers, even though they know you’re not local by looking at your car, in Buffalo, Ill. Covering the state primary for the New York Times was a fun way to meet my central Illinois neighbors.

The Domestic Life Archive is now expanded, with more pictures and text and easier search capability. Some photos will be accompanied by essays, like the one below.

Stubborn

Toddler parenting: if you’re yelling, you’ve lost. If you’re asking for sympathy, you’ve lost. If you’re posing a command as a suggestion, it won’t happen. And if you’re trying to use logic, you’re crazy.

Eli, age two and a half, asked for a glass of water as he was sitting on the toilet and we were preparing to take his older brother to school. Wanting to move him forward, I told him he could have a drink as soon as he was done going to the bathroom. At the time, my answer seemed natural and logical.

After several minutes of hysterical screaming, it was clear Eli disagreed.

He continued screaming as I carried him downstairs and unsuccessfully tried to give him a glass of water, unsuccessfully tried to get him dressed, and unsuccessfully encouraged him to dress himself. Still screaming and sobbing and naked from the waist down, Eli grabbed his cup of water, ran back upstairs, scrambled onto the toilet and drank, satisfied at last. He was still upset, but calm enough to pull on his underwear, putting both legs through one hole and wearing it like a belt. He put his pants on backwards. He was in no mood for help, and I was done pointing out the obvious. This is how we went to school, half an hour late, and how he brushed his teeth when we returned home.

Initially I marveled at the toddler who clung so tenaciously to such a silly demand. Later I wondered at the mother who did the same.

Domestic Life Archive

My younger son, Eli, age two, loves being wrapped in his lion towel after a bath in our Springfield, Ill., home.

The other day I had 75 minutes of quiet time in the car to think (well, first I listened to loud music, then I thought). I had been going through the year’s photos, choosing family pictures to print for grandparents. Certain images held my interest in a way they hadn’t at the time I took them. I kept returning to photos that revealed my two young sons’ independence and vulnerability. My presence as the unseen adult was implied but not part of the picture. The pictures resonate with me because they describe a kind of flow state important to childhood. That morning I read yet another devastating article about childhood sexual abuse. The innocence shown in the photographs seemed all the more special, and all the more fragile. “The Bubble” gallery

Tom Dougherty of Groveland, Ill., has a spacer where his left hip used to be. He is waiting for an infection caused by an all-metal hip to clear up so that he can get a new artificial joint.

To read the story, or see more of writer Barry Meier’s series on hip replacements: The High Cost of Failing Artificial Hips

The prints (and the dog) were both temporary visitors. The prints are headed to Milwaukee for an exhibition at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts organized by the Coalition of Photographic Arts. Juror was Catherine Edelman, director of the Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago. Although Ted is wearing the same fleece jacket in both photos, they were taken several months apart in 2008 as part of my Father to Son series.

When my five-year-old son wanted to wear $2.99 broken Salvation Army Buzz Lightyear wings, a 99-cent construction hat and white cotton archival gloves on a hike, I stifled a smile, said okay, and brought my camera. But when he announced his intention to jump from the playground’s surprisingly tall climbing rock, it was time for some motherly quashing.

“Honey, I’m so sorry, but those wings won’t help you fly.” He scowled and ignored me, already knowing the truth but not wanting to hear it out loud.

As I watched him move away from me and toward the crowded playground, I silently willed the world to be kind to him. I wanted to protect his innocence even more than I wanted to protect his body. I didn’t want anyone to tell him the truth, that he was just a little boy in hand-me-downs and a plastic helmet.

Some grownups smiled, but no one laughed or said anything mean. And Sam did jump from the very high rock. On his wings in red letters it says “THIS WING PACK IS NOT A FLYING TOY.” Clearly they were wrong.

From the series “Domestic Life.”