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Gina Harris, left, gets a final touch-up by Helen Noakes during a session at Expressions Photography in Littleton, Colo. Harris and her husband, Rob, learned during her pregnancy that their son, David, had a fatal kidney disorder. They arranged to have maternity and infant bereavement portraits taken through the organization Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep. (Carmel Zucker / For The Times) |
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DENVER -
In the muted light of the maternity ward, photographer Sandy Puc' works steadily, composing portraits of David. She focuses on his tiny toes, his curled fists, his mother gently stroking his cheek.
"I think I got everything," she says at last. Then she turns with her Canon.
"If you want to put your lips right on the top of his head?" she asks David's father. "There. That's beautiful."
There is always a final kiss to capture.
David was stillborn early this morning, without kidneys or working lungs. His parents, Gina and Rob Harris, will take home his plastic hospital bracelet and his blue blanket, embroidered with stars. They will try to hold onto their memories, but those will blur, and they will turn to these portraits: Gina nuzzling David's hair, so dark and curly, just like his dad's. Rob bending to dress his son.
Sandy knows what the pictures will mean; that's why she has come and stayed all night. A photographer who teaches portraiture worldwide, she also runs a volunteer network dedicated to photographing dead and dying infants.
Many hospitals offer bereavement photography when a newborn dies; typically, a nurse will snap a few pictures and package them into a memory box, along with a lock of the baby's hair, a plaster cast of her hands and inked footprints. For some families, that's enough, or too much.
But many parents want more. Scores of calls each week come into Sandy's nonprofit network of more than 3,000 professional photographers from all 50 states. The photographers donate their time and work, leaving each family with dozens of images:
A girl leaning in to kiss her brother. A mother cupping premature twins in her hands. A father holding his baby girl against his shoulder for one last dance.
The first time she was asked to photograph a dead baby, Sandy wanted to say no.
A couple she'd never met, Mike and Cheryl Haggard, had called her portrait studio to ask that she photograph their failing newborn, Maddux.
A mother of four, Sandy, 37, had spent a year in the hospital with her youngest son, who suffered from a breathing disorder at birth. "I couldn't let a parent in that situation down," she said. When she got to the hospital, Mike and Cheryl told her they planned to disconnect Maddux from life support. They would hold their son until he died. Then the Haggards would bring in Sandy to take his portrait.
"I felt like a wrecking ball hit me," Sandy said. She wasn't sure she could hold herself together.
An hour later, a nurse called her to the Haggards' room. Sandy entered to see Cheryl holding Maddux to her chest, skin to skin, grieving, but at peace. Focusing through eyes blurred with tears, Sandy took frame after frame.
"Do you know what you've given me?" Cheryl asked her later, when she'd seen the portraits. "You've given me my son."
Cheryl, a stay-at-home mom, and Mike, who runs a business removing dents from cars, had taken a few pictures of their son during his six days of life. Those images, Cheryl said, are raw. They show Maddux's yellowish skin tone, and the wires that snaked around him as doctors fought to keep him alive despite an underdeveloped brain.
"They're not pictures I go back and look at often," Cheryl said. "Those photos are reality. I don't need reality. I've lived it."
Sandy and the other volunteers retouch their portraits to smooth skin tone and hide bruises, though they will not airbrush out deformities. Their portraits, in black and white, are soft and luminous, elegiac. The infants look as though they are sleeping.
On the network's website, parents say that approach helps them remember their children the way they want to remember them: "Like the angelic babies that they are," one mother wrote. "Perfect in our minds," another said.
Sandy's portraits of Maddux, who died Feb. 10, 2005, hang in the Haggards' house, alongside framed photos of his three siblings.
"I think I got everything," she says at last. Then she turns with her Canon.
"If you want to put your lips right on the top of his head?" she asks David's father. "There. That's beautiful."
There is always a final kiss to capture.
David was stillborn early this morning, without kidneys or working lungs. His parents, Gina and Rob Harris, will take home his plastic hospital bracelet and his blue blanket, embroidered with stars. They will try to hold onto their memories, but those will blur, and they will turn to these portraits: Gina nuzzling David's hair, so dark and curly, just like his dad's. Rob bending to dress his son.
Sandy knows what the pictures will mean; that's why she has come and stayed all night. A photographer who teaches portraiture worldwide, she also runs a volunteer network dedicated to photographing dead and dying infants.
Many hospitals offer bereavement photography when a newborn dies; typically, a nurse will snap a few pictures and package them into a memory box, along with a lock of the baby's hair, a plaster cast of her hands and inked footprints. For some families, that's enough, or too much.
But many parents want more. Scores of calls each week come into Sandy's nonprofit network of more than 3,000 professional photographers from all 50 states. The photographers donate their time and work, leaving each family with dozens of images:
A girl leaning in to kiss her brother. A mother cupping premature twins in her hands. A father holding his baby girl against his shoulder for one last dance.
The first time she was asked to photograph a dead baby, Sandy wanted to say no.
A couple she'd never met, Mike and Cheryl Haggard, had called her portrait studio to ask that she photograph their failing newborn, Maddux.
A mother of four, Sandy, 37, had spent a year in the hospital with her youngest son, who suffered from a breathing disorder at birth. "I couldn't let a parent in that situation down," she said. When she got to the hospital, Mike and Cheryl told her they planned to disconnect Maddux from life support. They would hold their son until he died. Then the Haggards would bring in Sandy to take his portrait.
"I felt like a wrecking ball hit me," Sandy said. She wasn't sure she could hold herself together.
An hour later, a nurse called her to the Haggards' room. Sandy entered to see Cheryl holding Maddux to her chest, skin to skin, grieving, but at peace. Focusing through eyes blurred with tears, Sandy took frame after frame.
"Do you know what you've given me?" Cheryl asked her later, when she'd seen the portraits. "You've given me my son."
Cheryl, a stay-at-home mom, and Mike, who runs a business removing dents from cars, had taken a few pictures of their son during his six days of life. Those images, Cheryl said, are raw. They show Maddux's yellowish skin tone, and the wires that snaked around him as doctors fought to keep him alive despite an underdeveloped brain.
"They're not pictures I go back and look at often," Cheryl said. "Those photos are reality. I don't need reality. I've lived it."
Sandy and the other volunteers retouch their portraits to smooth skin tone and hide bruises, though they will not airbrush out deformities. Their portraits, in black and white, are soft and luminous, elegiac. The infants look as though they are sleeping.
On the network's website, parents say that approach helps them remember their children the way they want to remember them: "Like the angelic babies that they are," one mother wrote. "Perfect in our minds," another said.
Sandy's portraits of Maddux, who died Feb. 10, 2005, hang in the Haggards' house, alongside framed photos of his three siblings.
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