The Family Album Project This is Shea. Shea is a 17 year old beautiful girl from Atwater. These photos were taken at her bedside at Stanford Hospital in Dec of 2014. She received a new heart and new lungs. The first day her breathing tube was removed after her surgery was on her 17th birthday. No present could top off taking your first breath with your new lungs!! These photos were taken by photographer Virginia Becker and husband Albert. Virginia is a small business owner, providing library management services to various law firms. Albert is a full time orthotist/prosthetist. Together they have given away over 35,000 free individual and family portraits since 2010. Initially, I thought we would be providing our service to our hard working farm workers and their families. But, that is not where the journey has taken us. At least not for today. When we started there was a need for a volunteer photographer at The Ronald McDonald House at Stanford (RMH). I had never been in RMH before and had little knowledge of what services they provided. I now know that RMH provides housing for families of critically ill children. Cancer, organ transplants, and numerous unusual diseases; we’ve seen and photographed it all. At first I wasn’t certain how to photograph medically fragile children. All the tubes. Discolored skin. Excess hair due to the anti-rejection medications, etc. Now nothing phases me. It is my goal to make each child look their best. Their happiest. Their strongest. I don’t want to make these children look sick. I want them to look and feel strong. I do this by discussing each picture with the child and family before I take the shot.”- Virginia said. In 2013, Virginia became part of The National Disaster Team for The American Red Cross as a media photographer. “ My strong suit is photographing disaster sites and shelters” she said. According to Virginia, the key to knowing how and when to gently approach a family is vital to gain trust before photographing. For the past year, due to budget cuts, a full time paid photographer for the Foster Care System for Santa Clara County was eliminated. Virginia volunteered her time to photograph the children and families. She has also partnered with a battered woman’s shelter in Yuba City. Where she goes at least once a year to photograph the women and children. “ It is important that these families have a lasting memory of the time they lived in the shelter and what got them there”- she said. She has visited a remote area area of Guatemala,photographed a variety of senior homes, senior veterans, low-income housing complexes, photographed Big Brothers and Big Sisters, and homeless individuals who are trying to transition back into society. The pictures taken are used in their job interview process. Virginia and Albert now have a team of 12 volunteers. One or two volunteers are always on site. Their main job is crowd control. Not only does this help manage the sign in sheet but helps Virginia stay on track. They work really hard to create a joy filled atmosphere and create a fun and memorable event. “ Each family takes away something different from a TFAP shoot.” When I first started this I thought the satisfaction from this would come from knowing that we helped keep the family album alive. After doing this for four years, that has become secondary to the joy I receive each time I connect and photograph a family. Unexplainable joy. Joy like I have never felt. I did not know this level of happiness and fulfillment was possible. My life has completely changed and joyfully will never be the same. After taking pictures of the homeless, of children that are critically and terminally ill, of being the last picture of a child before his/ her death, of seeing extreme poverty in Guatemala; how can you not be affected? How can your life not be enriched by these experiences?” The Family Photo Project’s goal is to provide families, in all their varied forms, with professional quality hard copy printed photographs. They provide this service to those that otherwise would not have access to a professional photographer. It is important to TFAP that the prints be passed down to the next generation ensuring the survival of the family album. Be it good, be it not so good, that exact moment in history needs to be preserved. The best feedback I have gotten to date came last month after we did our shoot at the battered woman’s shelter in Yuba City. If I ever wonder if what we do is worth it, I’ll just reread this letter. Here it is: Our clients learn to live in the present. It is hard for them to remember the past and difficult to imagine the future. We try to help with that but sometimes the best, we and they can do, is just live in the present. You, Albert, Cindy…you cannot imagine how amazing you make their present. Seeing their picture the women can see the best in themselves. It is so common for us to find a woman with tears in her eyes as she looks at her picture. She is always amazed at what the camera captures. We spend the time to tell her that what she is seeing, is what we see when we look at her. That is the best of her. Not what she feels. Not what her past has defined for her. That is her. Her present and her future. Women with children immediately see something different. They see their children and their future. Hope is what mothers see. It is often what has kept them and their children alive. It is what has made it possible for them to find a way out for themselves, but mostly for their children. As a mother her hope is for her children. When we hear that we try to make sure she sees herself in the portrait. Her strongest and best self. As a mother and as a woman. I do not think I had any idea of how a picture can actually change a life. When we first connected, I thought…”what a nice touch”, “what amazing people to do this for us”. I had no idea of what would really happen. No idea of how people can actually begin to see themselves through someone else’s “eyes”. We can tell them in counseling a dozen times. Your pictures become the portrait of what we tell them. It is a true gift. To them and to us. I cannot and will not ever be able to thank you enough. From each woman with tears in her eyes, from each child that today is excited to see themselves, from each child that someday when they are older will see the portrait and remember a Christmas in the big old house as just that much better, from each staff member who gets to witness the moment and from me who sees what the future holds…I thank you. Virginia and Albert and their team have impacted many lives just like Shea’s from Atwater with just a few hard copy printed photographs that soon become history but a moment in time is frozen forever.
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 05:55:44 +0000
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