'This has been my life all my life'

Salisbury based professional photographer Sean Meyers and writer Janice Fuller pose for a photograph. The duo worked together on a project visiting a retirement home in Winston-Salem talking and photographing residents for a gallery show of the images by Meyers and poems written by Fuller. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

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Salisbury based professional photographer Sean Meyers and writer Janice Fuller pose for a photograph. The duo worked together on a project visiting a retirement home in Winston-Salem talking and photographing residents for a gallery show of the images by Meyers and poems written by Fuller. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

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Salisbury based professional photographer Sean Meyers and writer Janice Fuller pose for a photograph. The duo worked together on a project visiting a retirement home in Winston-Salem talking and photographing residents for a gallery show of the images by Meyers and poems written by Fuller. Photo by Jon C. Lakey, Salisbury Post.

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By Katie Scarvey

kscarvey@salisburypost.com

You never know what will capture an artist’s attention.

For photojournalist Sean Meyers and poet Janice Fuller, it was a group of people who sometimes feel forgotten by time.

In a collaborative effort, the two artists focused their attention on the residents of the Lutheran Home in Winston-Salem. Since most of the residents will not create art of their own, Sean and Janice wanted to create art from their memories, their dreams, their time-worn faces and hands.

The result is “This Has Been My Life All My Life”: Portraits of Residents, Lutheran Home-Winston Salem, North Carolina, on display now in the Delhaize Conference Room at Waterworks Visual Arts Center, with an opening reception from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26.

Sean, a freelance photographer, has shared his talents often with Lutheran Services in Salisbury as a contributor to their “Faces of Abundant Living” project. He’s also taught photography at the Abundant Living Adult Day Care facility.

He heard about the Lutheran Home in Winston-Salem from Mary Ann Johnson, who works for Lutheran Services for the Aging, and he began considering the creative possibilities.

The facility began as a private rest home called Maple Grove in 1953 and then became a long-term care facility in 1972. The home had deteriorated badly over the years and was failing financially before being taken over in 2001 by Lutheran Services for the Aging. Many of the residents had severe disabilities and were indigent.

“Sean and I felt they deserved to be noticed,” said Janice, a professor of English and Writer-in-Residence at Catawba College. The goal was for Sean to capture images of the residents while Janice would collect their words and memories and use them in poems.

They began visiting in early February, returning eight or nine times. They were never sure exactly who they’d see on any given day.

“We enjoyed them,” Janice said. “They’re people who’ve had interesting lives and have stories to tell.”

Sean would talk to and greet as many residents as he could. They would relax and let their guard down as they got to know him.

“Sean was better about getting them to open up than I was,” Janice said.

Sean describes his interaction with one resident, whose photograph is part of the exhibition.

“He never talked. He would be in a wheelchair in the hallway. I walked by his room and he was lying in bed sideways.

“I waved, and he acknowledged me. That was the first time it had happened.”

As Janice would begin drawing the residents’ stories out, Sean would try to be the proverbial fly on the wall, simply observing until the right photographic moment presented itself. “I’d try to capture that moment in their eyes,” he says.

As residents got to know their frequent visitors, they grew more comfortable.

“The more you show your face, the more they loosen up,” Sean said. “After the first day they were excited to see you again.”

Many had clear, specific remembrances, Janice said.

They heard a story about a hound dog falling into a well, an admission of addiction to Pepsi and chewing tobacco, a tale of someone kissing a guy named Rooster, which led to this memorable line: “If a woman wants to kiss a man, there’s nothing you can do.”

Sometimes, the memories were questionable, like the musings of a woman who talked about being a CIA agent as a girl.

“Memory does all kinds of strange things,” says Janice, who took pages and pages of notes based on her conversations with the residents.

Some of the residents they encountered were alert; others were not. Some talked; some never spoke.

Janice says she began to think about nursing homes in general, and how people are forgotten by society.

“We’re not a culture that tends to respect the elderly,” she said.

She was struck by how connected the residents were to their caregivers and how much affection there was between them.

The title of the collection, “This Has Been My Life All My Life” is a quotation from one of the residents. It was chosen as the title of the exhibit when it became clear to Sean and Janice how time was an integral element in how the residents thought about things. “They kept talking about ‘always’ — how they had ‘always’ been there,” Janice said. “They almost seemed fixed in the time now.”

Perhaps, as Janice pointed out, that’s because things that mark time for people are largely missing at the home.

Still, there were poignant indications of interest in the future. One woman spoke of her hope of getting another wild horse to train. Another, who had been queen of a Christmas dance, shared that she wasn’t married — “yet.”

Ultimately, what emerged from the visit were 16 photographs of residents, paired with a poem for each.

Janice let her poems, to some extent, be influenced by the photos. Seeing the photographs, she said, was almost as helpful as consulting her notes, since an image would prompt her to recall details about the person or what he or she had said.

Janice kept the poems short, and she also kept them true to the person’s history. She didn’t want to project her imagination on them, she said.

“Normally, I would invent a life from a photo,” she says. “It was a challenge for me not to impose or invent too much,” or violate the essence of what they were communicating.

At the heart of the project, Janice says, was giving a face and a voice to the residents, to say, “They were here; they existed.”

The exhibit continues at Waterworks through March 17.