Departure and Return

Into (and out of, sans glasses) the cold and fast-running Stanislaus River near Ripon, Ca. on May 28, 2008

Booty!

 

Infinite Love

 

First photo:
Taken by American W. Eugene Smith in 1971, the black-and-white photo depicts a mother cradling her severely deformed, naked daughter in a traditional Japanese bathroom. The mother, Ryoko Uemura, agreed to deliberately pose the startlingly intimate photograph with Smith to illustrate the terrible effects of Minamata disease (a type of mercury poisoning) on the body and mind of her daughter Tomoko.  At the wishes of Tomoko Uemura's family, the photograph was withdrawn from further publication in 1997, 20 years after Tomoko's death and the copyright for the photograph was granted to the Uemura family.


Second photo:
"Gramps" details the final years of coal miner Frank Tugend’s life, which he spent in the care of his family. Tugend suffered from generalized arteriosclerosis in the years before his death and required assistance from his grandsons for virtually every task.
In the photo, Dan Jury is seen cradling his grandfather in the year 1974. “On February 11, 1974, Frank Tugend, aged eighty-one and of dubiously sound mind- but certainly of sound body – removed his false teeth and announced he was longer going to eat or drink. Three weeks later to the day, he died.”