I Can Do This!

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: June 21, 2004
Reviewed:
Latest Update: June 21, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Photo Essay on Assisted Living
by Srey Vivo

This photo essay didn't make it into the first hypertext poem because we were a tad rushed. Srey Vivo did the photography at a home she worked in. She did it by asking the people who lived in the home to take pictures of their everyday lives with the disposable cameras she gave them. Then she developed the photos and presented her work to us in class. Srey Vivo was in the class on Sociology of Knowingness in which we focused on the visual aspects of sociology and what the world looks like to each of us, Person and Other. Srey was doing her internship in assisted living, and she brought many stories of answerability to class. (Upload the description and drawing of the dilemma when a younger person tells an older person what to do - reversal of roles of normative expectations.)

For her Project for the Visual Sociology Exhibit: Naked Space, Srey distributed disposable cameras to many of those with whom she works. And they shared their photographs with her. The painting of the week is drawn from one of those photographs. Later today, I'll try to get all the photographs up so that we can all work with finding ways to present in ways that they will appreciate and recognize for their own memories. The painting was inspired from one of the photographs:

I was attracted by the form and line. Thought of Rouault with his heavy black outline, and promptly outlined the shape that drew my attention. Then I added color. I did all this with the software program that came with my computer, not with a major art software program. What I was trying for was answerability, the hearing of the voice of the Other. When Srey asked that the residents photograph each other, some of them forgot to use flash - makes sense; they don't use flash often. And I sensed that Srey was a little disappointed with the results.

That gave me this wonderful opportunity to remind you that answerability is not an epiphany; you don't just get to say "I'd like to try to know you, to hear your voice." Answerability is a gift, a tool that we must learn to use. That learning includes learning to use flash, once they understand that we really mean we'd like to have their visual take on the context, their voices. My playing with the photo I called "I Can Do This" reflects MY ANSWER to the woman wose portrait it is. I'll bet she doesn't think of that moment, snapped by one of her friends at the home, as an expression of the power to do something. But for me, that's got to be hard work to use a walker and not to complain, to preserve some independence in movement. So my answer is to see her somewhat differently from what her friend saw in snapping the photo. Now, we need her answer, and the responses of many to learn to listen in good faith to our elders, and to lend them all the skills we have in redefining the joys of life.

. . .

Srey invites you to add your feelings and responses to her photos, as I have done. Visual Sociology in a Senior Residence. jeanne