Just Another Family

    “In the Bronx, 20 Kids and Counting” by Jake Naughton is a glance into the lives of lesbian foster parents and the children they support. This glace is made real by the photographs of Stephen Reiss, who by chance stumbled into the lives of Ms. Scarborough-Harris and her partner, Ms. Paris Harris. What started out as an assignment of photographing elderly in New York ended up becoming this 5-year-old project that Reiss is still understanding, absorbing, and capturing.

    

    The photographs show this development of closeness and intimacy. “’You have to do your research and you have to put in your hours talking with these people, interviewing them and figuring out about their lives,’ [Reiss] said. ‘And I think that informs the photography a lot. That’s the best way to shoot: deliberately and with purpose.’” This is the making of documentary photography.

    Not only does the photographer have a purpose, but also he is developing that as he continues to investigate and interact with his subjects. He started this almost with intrigue and with a whim, but it has become a more elaborate and detailed story of not only these foster mothers, but also the mothers they even keep in their care. This, of course, is not easy.

    One must understand that intimacy is a slow progress, and within such a rigid system as foster care, there is a lot to give before one can take.  “’We believe the service we give is the rent we pay to stay on the planet,’ Ms. Scarborough-Harris said. ‘It’s been 10 years and 20 kids, and it just doesn’t look like it’s going to end.’”

    The photographs are soft and allow people not familiar with this world to enter it quietly and inquisitively. This is a world that not many understand nor know much about. The foster system is built to protect children, but in most cases, there is a lot of pain and suffering involved even after they are placed in homes. Another level of curiosity is peeked when one realizes these women are in fact lesbians and care for countless girls who pass through their doors and hopefully onto bigger and better things. “’People want to know about it,’ [Reiss] said. ‘And I think it’s my job as a documentarian to try and inform people about this issue right in their backyard.’”

    He does a lovely job of letting this world slowly open to his viewer. There are various vantage points, not all close ups and certainly not all portraits, or far away snapshots. The quaint imagery in these photographs have so much more depth and vibrancy to them, primarily because of its subjects; for that, this project will hopefully continue to develop and educate the populace on what life is for this particular family and all the lives that make up it. 

Personal Revelation:

I have worked with children and families in South Bronx during an internship I had over summer 2013. For me, this work really captures something I saw infrequently in the lives of the kids I met. Many, when signing up, wrote down different people for mothers, fathers, and guardians. I come for a family that is not "broken" in the most generic sense. Both my parents live together, see each other, interact, so hence we would be called a nuclear family. However, for many kids, the concept of family is not as "rounded" as we would think. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it was like a clan kind of thing, or tribe, where entire blocks of neighborhoods would have multiple guardians present and hence one child could have 4 or 5 people that he/she would call brother or sister, mother or father, yet they would not at all be related. Other times, some kids shared parents but were not recognized as family to each other. These were the things I appreciated in the kids...that they could look at me, see me smile and laugh, enjoy their company, and then consider me a part of their family. 

This piece really does delve into a world that not many want to recognize or see. It is not "perfect" yet it is not "broken". For me, this is a wonderful exploration into a side of the world that many want to suppress or ignore. I appreciate and adore these women for what they do. They do not shy away from their love for each other or for the girls that come into their care. Many of these girls are considered "women", because they are mothers themselves, but it all comes down to this: this is just another family- a unit of people that care for one another and try their best to be the best people they can be. These photographs simply capture that and display it for all to see.