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"Photographer captures emotions of death" Cincinnati Post article By Cindy Starr, Post staff reporter December 5th, 2000 Gordon Baer's exploration of death and dying began with a family request. His cousin summoned him to Louisville to see with his own eyes what was happening to his Aunt Beck, a 95-year-old woman who was living in one of the area's most respected nursing homes. The cousin also asked Baer to bring his camera. What developed may be the most controversial and evocative work of Baer's 35-year career in photojournalism. During a two-week span, Baer took 600 photographs of Rebecca ''Beck'' as she lay dying, racked by pain and bed sores, in the nursing home. The photographs show the love Aunt Beck's family felt for her, the vicarious pain felt by aides who cared for her, and the horrific pressure sores that festered during her decline. A selection of Baer's photographs also will be part of an exhibit, ''Sight & Light: Works by Area Photographers,'' which opens Thursday at Christ Hospital. Baer said his photo essay, entitled ''Beck,'' is intended to move people emotionally, to educate and to make people aware of their own mortality. ''These photographs ... attempt to depict our need to explore a number of issues,'' Baer said. ''This is what happened to an attentive family who never knew to think about some of the things that were imposed upon them.'' The images also raise questions about an affluent and modern society that enables people to outlive their bodies but has not allocated the resources necessary to guarantee humane end-of-life care. In a recent report to Congress, the Department of Health and Human Services said 54 percent of nursing homes fall below the proposed minimum standard of providing each patient with two hours of care by nurses' aides each day. At the end of her life, Baer said, his Aunt Beck was ''a living corpse trapped in a physical hell.'' She died last March of urosepsis, a toxic condition caused by the infiltration of urine into bodily tissues. Baer's intent is not to lacerate the Louisville nursing home where Beck resided. (The family has requested that the nursing home, which has a religious affiliation, not be named.) Nurses and aides - whose caring voices can be heard along with Beck's moans on an audiotape Baer created - are in their own war zone, Baer said. ''The staff is vicariously battered.'' If Beck, a woman who loved University of Louisville basketball, leaves a legacy of improving our dialogue about dying, one of the last taboo subjects in America, it is a legacy she did not actively choose. Baer said his aunt experienced periods of consciousness up until her last day or two and knew she was being photographed. But the decision to make the photographs public was made by her son, Morris of Louisville, and endorsed by other surviving relatives, including her two sisters, Baer and Baer's cousin, Carol Nelson, a social worker in Frankfort, Ky. ''We were wanting people to get information and at the same time not invade her privacy,'' Ms. Nelson said. ''We felt as long as the photographs didn't expose her personally, intimately, the concept behind it she would have been supportive of. She wouldn't have wanted anyone to go through this kind of pain.'' Daniel Brown, curator of Christ Hospital's exhibit, said in a written statement that the struggles of Baer's aunt ''are portrayed with kindness and love, as well as with the honesty and deep integrity of the photojournalist at his best. If one of art's functions is to move us emotionally, then these extraordinary photographs ... represent art's highest achievements.'' Connie Cook, clinical manger of Christ Hospital's cancer center and project leader for the exhibit, said the photographs depicting the end of life are controversial when presented at a hospital, which is devoted to saving lives. But patients also are brought to hospitals to die in a hospice setting, she noted. Ms. Cook said Baer's photographs are educational and convey a message of healing. ''It's healing because you look at someone's end of life, something we have dealt with or will be dealing with, and you can say she was so loved; her caregivers took very good care of her, as well as her family.'' One of Bear's most shocking photographs, which is being considered for the Christ Hospital exhibit, shows some of the pressure sores that afflicted her. The image, taken after her death, shows her feet, which are eroded and eaten away as if a flame had been held to them. Beck's family is continuing to investigate her treatment in the nursing home and plans to present their findings to the home's board of directors. Beck was on morphine in her final days, but she was not comfortable, said Baer, who recorded her agony on audiotape. During twice-daily dressing changes her moans and cries were relentless as a baby's, only softer and weaker. ''The dressing changes seemed more of a protocol for the nursing home than something that would do any good for her,'' Baer said. ''All it did was escalate her into agony.'' There is also a photograph of Beck in the morgue. She is lying on her back and her head is propped up on an anvil, revealing the slim, graceful curve of her profile. Her face, free of pain, is smooth and lovely. Her white hair shines. Baer said he was reassured after seeing her this way. ''She was serene there; she became beautiful. I was shocked when I saw her skin. It was like being with a girl. And so in death she became more vital than in life. And her life was death.'' This is not the first time Baer has tackled the subject of grief. His book entitled ''Vietnam: The Battle Comes Home'' captures in photographs the pain and post-traumatic stress experienced by veterans. In a 1986 article for News Photographer magazine, he wrote: ''Certainly, covering grief and trauma has helped us to talk about the 'unmentionables,' allowing us to open up, to be able to talk and deal with our feelings.'' Baer said he felt uncomfortable photographing his aunt. But on days when he left his camera behind, he felt regret. The pain of producing the ''Beck essay,'' he said, returns to him in waves. ''It has also caused me to rethink morals and ethics on all fronts, not just the medical but also the journalistic,'' he said. When photographs are seen, he concluded, ''healing can begin.'' Click here for the article on the Cincinnati Post web site. |