Aunt Beck, 1905-2000

Photojournalist Gordon Baer was documenting this photo essay unaware that work on Bill Moyer's series on death and dying was simultaneously in progress. Baer's still photography, focusing on a single family, addresses what Modern Maturity magazine ascribes to Moyer's special:

"focuses on the controversial issue of how our society cares -- and does not care -- for people at the end of life... documents the last months, days, and hours of more than a dozen men and women and their struggle to balance medical intervention with comfort and dignity at this final threshold.

`There is a growing realization that something has gone wrong and that the time has come to fix it', Bill Moyers says, referring to our culture's habit of making the quality of death a lower priority than the quality of life. `How do we build a system,' Bill Moyers asks, `that will help us tackle the social, financial, spiritual, and physical challenges of dying so that we can have confidence that our experience of it will be on our terms and will reflect the values we hold most dear?'"

My images give a face to this New York Times story.

For more information on Beck click here.

About the photographer.

Contact the photographer:

Gordon Baer Photography
113 W. 4^thSt.
Cincinnati, OH 45202
(513) 381-4466
fax (513) 381-4466
gbphoto@gbphoto.com
www.gbphoto.com