Kate and Orla: a photo essay about pet therapy

This post is a long overdue: I recently realized that, despite being created and published in 2016, I had never posted the work here. My words here will be minimal, mostly limited to background and logistics, since my brief essay and captions are better read with the photos, as published (link below).

I received this assignment from Parable Magazine to create a photo essay about Kate and her dog, Orla, both of who had been working in pet therapy (via the national organization Pet Partners) for some time. Kate, a practicing Catholic, recognizes this ministry as a way to serve and comfort the sick.

One of the challenges for creating the work was that their schedule only saw them serving once per month: to observe and understand them sufficiently—and to create a body of work broad enough to fill the pages—required planning and working together over four months. Each visit, though, was entirely unique: a private home, a nursing home (in fact, two, but one was visiting individual patients while the other was a group therapy session), and visiting Kate and Orla at home (which is where the final photographs and the cover were made).

These two make an incredibly kind and caring team. I can say easily that I've never met a more gentle and trusting dog than Orla, who knew me and was comfortable with me from our first meeting. That speaks volumes about Kate.

My photographs and words were the cover story for that issue of Parable and can be seen in the magazine's online version. In 2017, the Catholic Press Association gave the work five awards (ranging from the cover and individual photos to the entire published set)—truly a wonderful honor.

I am tremendously grateful to Kate, Orla, and the families and individuals who allowed me to create during these very special moments.

sculptor Emile Birch for New Hampshire Magazine

I have a great love of photographing artists at work, if only to observe their process, which is invariably unique. So when I received an assignment to photograph Emile Birch, who is one of New Hampshire's preeminent sculptors, I was grateful for the opportunity. His public monuments and work in schools had earned him a feature in New Hampshire Magazine exactly six years prior; this time, however, the circumstances were different. Emile had begun suffering from dementia, and this article would confront that issue directly.

Editor Rick Broussard sent me an advance copy of writer Karen Jamrog's article to help me prepare. Rick, creative director Chip Allen, and I decided the photography would require two stages: first, him working in his home studio; second, a portrait at one of his public sculptures. I would coordinate with his wife, Cynthia, whom he relies upon for appointments, transportation, et al.

The studio visit was scheduled first. I traveled west early on a Saturday morning, enjoyed brief introductions and a tour, and watched as he touched up some paint on a few of his new wooden pieces. (He's now limited to small-scale productions, which fill his studio.)

Although I knew another session for the portrait would occur, when I saw Emile step into the doorway to his studio towards the end of my time there, I couldn't help but ask him to pause while I made a series of photographs. As it happens, the magazine chose this portrait as the opening photograph (rather than the location one, as initially planned).

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For the location portrait, we decided to use a lesser known work of his but one on prominent display in the capitol: The Eternal Shield, which was commissioned to memorialize the state's fallen firefighters. We met there a few weeks later around dusk to make the portraits. We lingered a bit (and enjoyed a coffee in a local shop) to allow darkness to fall in hopes that the statue's installed lighting (in the "flame") would illuminate; when that didn't happen, we said our goodbyes.

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Karen's article about Emile, his legacy, and his current condition are well worth reading. I'm honored and grateful to illustrate a very small part of his life and work.

in memory of Charlie Hunt

When I speak to people about my work, they are occasionally surprised when I mention that the majority of my subjects are strangers. We meet once, perhaps twice, make photographs, and are unlikely to see each other again. The act of creating portraits—which is so intimate, requiring my subjects to allow me, if not into their environment, at least to be quickly at ease before my camera—becomes a fleeting interaction of two independent lives. This is not desirable, but it is simply a reality of life. Despite the brevity of our time together, I am always grateful of their time and trust, and I consider them to be friends.

Words are not sufficient to express the sorrow that one such friend has left us. When I was assigned to photograph Charlie Hunt and his family almost six years ago, he was a very young man recovering from brain cancer. His spirit was not diminished, however, and we chatted and made photographs at his home for a couple hours. My visual memory of our session—him playing his guitar, his siblings, his parents—remains quite vivid.

As the cancer returned over the years past, his diagnosis and circumstances were no doubt a great struggle both for him and his family. Charlie died on Wednesday, December 13, 2017. I have on occasion encountered his parents, for which I grateful; but I shall always regret not seeing him again.

Requiescat in pace, Charlie.

Tim Roemer, engineer

Parable Magazine assigned me to make a portrait of Tim Roemer, a young engineer who holds multiple degrees from University of New Hampshire. We wanted to create the photographs in the UNH engineering lab, so he and I met there, and he gave me a tour of the facilities, including the machine he built for his graduate degree. (The device tests and measures the rate at which metal stretches over tension—I think.)

Tim was a great host and subject. We were able to go anywhere we wished, thanks to his good relationships with the administrators. A real joy of these assignments is seeing a world hidden from everyday view—and then showing them to my audience. I could have made his portrait anywhere, but by using a location that was his academic home for 6 years, the photograph becomes a small part of the accompanying written narrative, allowing the reader to see a view of an engineering lab. Such an environment is also more visually interesting, of course.

Alan Chong for New Hampshire Magazine

Last fall, I was commissioned by New Hampshire Magazine to create a portrait of Alan Chong, the new Director and CEO of The Currier Museum of Art. It would be made on location, and the magazine wanted to use the opportunity to promote a major new exhibition at the museum about the White Mountains, which was still being installed. Their idea was to place him in front of a large reproduction of a painting, in order to have a faux mountain-esque background.

Because of the delicacy of photographing in a museum, the magazine’s creative director and I scouted our locations the day before the session. We found the reproduction and planned lighting, and we identified a few other potential spots as alternatives.

This latter planning was worth it: when we entered the space with gear the next day, a five-foot tall crate containing a painting was directly in front of the wall we were going to use. Our PR contact at the museum checked with the curatorial staff, and moving the crate would not be possible.

We shifted to our second location, the Winter Garden Café. This is actually one of my favorite spots in the museum: a very tall ceiling allows diffused light from high windows scatter evenly through the room, which is a light grey. The modern, clean lines are especially strong in the corner of the room.

Alan met us there. We worked quickly and moved to two other spots in the museum to give the editor some options, but I was confident that our first photographs were the strongest. The one below was published.

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Alan Chong, executive director of the Currier Museum of Art

York Family for Family Business Magazine

I’ve known various members of the York family for years. Most recently, I created executive portraits for the Dyn leadership team, including Kyle York, their CSO. So I was excited when I received an assignment from Family Business Magazine to photograph his entire family--parents, the five brothers, spouses, and grandkids. The magazine needed a portrait with the parents and brothers for the cover, and another with everyone. I wanted a different location for each, but I knew the timeline would be tight, so we couldn’t move too far between the two photos.

Fortunately, Kyle's assistant, Ashley, helped coordinate this entire project. She and I worked through some ideas for locations, and we settled on the building owned by the family and the current home of GYK Antler: located in the millyard of Manchester, I had just been there a few weeks prior for a meeting. As it happens, the building itself was owned by Henry Spaulding, grandfather of the York brothers, when he ran an athletic shoe manufacturing company. So this location not only had ideal spots to create the photos I needed to make (my primary concern), but it also had significance to the family and relevance to the article being written.

Ashley also coordinated the entire family schedule for this session--twice, in fact. We had initially settled on a Friday afternoon in October. I was in my studio preparing that day when Ashley called a few hours prior to the session . She asked whether I had seen the news: I hadn’t, so she told me about the major DDOS attack on Dyn’s servers that had been occurring all day. The company had thought that the attack had ended in the morning, but another round had started, so Kyle was going to be occupied for the rest of the day, and we had to reschedule. The day's weather had been overcast and raining anyway, so I wasn’t terribly disappointed.

The weather was far better for the new session, but Daylight Savings had also occurred in the interim, which meant our timeline was going to be pushing against the available light. I had prepared the lighting for both locations (with Ashley standing in as a test subject) to be ready to move quickly once everyone arrived.

After some lighting adjustments (to account for the difference of light between setup and the start), the session went smoothly. Meeting and working with the entire family was wonderful. Gratefully, both the magazine and the family seems pleased with the results.

in the state prison

2016 was a Year of Mercy for the Catholic Church, and Holy Doors were established throughout the diocese (at least one in each deanery) for the faithful. One such door was made in New Hampshire's state prison in Concord, upon the request of an inmate while Bishop Libasci was visiting. As it was very likely the only Holy Door in the world located in a prison, the diocesan magazine featured it in an article ("Mercy Behind Bars", Sept/Oct 2016). I was asked to make photographs.

This wasn't my first assignment in the state prison: one of my first jobs for this magazine was a feature on the prison chaplain, who's also a Catholic deacon. That was long ago, and, besides the stresses of photographing a subject, I had to be keenly aware of my surroundings and not wander from my escorts. Even that wasn't sufficient: we had just stepped outside to tour the yard when we were called back over the intercom by the watchtower. So much for that photo op.

While I had some familiarity with the process and environment, this assignment had its own challenges. First, the prison Holy Door was nothing but the door to the chapel with a small sign signifying its status; no other decorations were permitted. So it's a door.

Second, I'd be photographing the weekly Mass held in the chapel. A local priest visits and says Mass there, assisted by the deacon. But, in discussing this assignment with the communications director and the editor, we decided not to show any of the inmates' faces. We could have requested photo releases from them, but with a couple dozen inmates in attendance, that could have quickly become out of hand. Furthermore, my bosses wished to avoid any potential criticism that we were glorifying the inmates. The story was about the Holy Door and the unique opportunity for blessings it brought to the inmates and the prison. We didn't wish to emphasize any individuals there, at least for this article. So not including inmates' faces in the photographs was another limit.

Finally, and I didn't discover this until I was there, but the lighting in the chapel was some of the worst I'd ever seen. Large lamps suspended from the 30'+ ceilings were directed upwards, resulting in dull, flat light. Better yet, the bulbs were old-style fluorescent ones with major color shifts seen from photo to photo (and sometimes even in one frame). The magazine wanted color photos, of course, but I knew the results would be far better in black & white.

Despite all of these, entering this subculture--convicted, imprisoned criminals who are also practicing Catholics--that is far from our daily lives was admittedly surreal. I watched as the inmates prepared for Mass: rearranged the chapel from the previous Protestant service, set up the altar, rehearsed the music, assisted the deacon. I met a few, and while not verbose, they were friendly and pleasant. Most importantly for my working there, they were focused on the Mass and didn't seem to mind my presence. For all of its photographic failings, the space became transformed: for that hour, the reality of being in a prison was forgotten, and the reverence I witnessed there was no different than any of the dozens of churches I've visited over the years. I'd like to think that, unlike these other places, living here, the spiritual can take priority in a peculiar and special way.   

Beth Ann O'Hara for New Hampshire Magazine

Beth Ann O'Hara, March 2014.

I was assigned to photograph Beth Ann as part of New Hampshire Magazine's "Remarkable Women 2014: Game Changers" article. While known for her theater work, I was more intrigued by a passing reference to her being McGovern's photographer during the NH component of his presidential run. I asked her about this when I visited her, and she revealed that he had invited her to continue with him throughout his national campaign. Her family obligations, however, led her to decline this offer.

I asked whether she had those photographs at hand, but after a search, she couldn't locate them. We promised each other another visit to explore them and discuss this part of state and national history from one who witnessed it in a way few others did.

The above unpublished photograph from our session shows her intricate needlepoint art hanging on the wall. They depict the four seasons.

a cover for Parable Magazine

Claire Aucoin had been a person of interest for Parable Magazine's editors for some time, but her work in Colombia kept the New Hampshire native far from her home. So when she was here briefly last summer, author Gary Bouchard and I visited her together for an interview and some portraits. As she related her personal history and awe-inspiring work for Colombia's poorest at a nearby church, Gary and I both realized that hers was a much larger story than initially thought.

Knowing that I may not have access to her again, we asked to see her family farm, where many of her siblings still reside and work. Knowing this would very likely become a cover story, I made portraits in multiple locations there. The resulting article and photographs were just published.