PHOTOGRAPHER DOCUMENTS ILLNESS ON HIS OWN TERMS
Jason Selman continues cancer fight while trying to live ‘pretty normal, productive life’
SANTA CRUZ » Standing close to her mate, Jana Monello watches him train his lens on a signpost, a quiet moment in a generic neighborhood, unfolded laundry piled on the couch.
The photographer, Jason Selman, however, sees the play of the light, the patterns in the shadows, snippets of real life.
“I’m like, ‘What are you taking a picture of?’ Then, when he shows me later, I’m like, oh my god, it’s so amazing what he sees,” Monello said. “I wish I could see the world through his eyes. He has such a gift for that.”
Monello and Selman have spoken with the Sentinel for a series of interviews spread out over multiple months. In recent weeks, the couple has become more hopeful. Selman carefully has emerged from his Seabright home on short-distance roaming trips, a steady stream of oxygen trickling from a portable pack carried by Monello to ease his journey. In order to breathe easily, Selman only wears a standard blueand-white hospital-issue paper mask, meaning the duo finds itself giving other, less health-conscious pedestrians a wide berth.
The 46-year-old weighs just 115 pounds, receives his nutrition intravenously, can spend some 10 hours a day hooked up to a ventilator and has lain a significant amount of time in hospital beds during the past several years. He was diagnosed with the rare autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis in 2007 and then, a couple of years after surgical removal of his thymus gland, was struck by an incurable form of related cancer called recurrent thymoma. The cancer’s symptoms, however, were kept at bay for a decade, with Selman receiving radiation and chemotherapy treatments every few years and allowing him to live a “pretty normal, productive life.”
The Davenport native described himself as being “born with saltwater in the air and the sound of the ocean in my ears” where he first cultivated a love for outdoor photography and grew into a “fanatical surfer.” When Selman was first diagnosed, his hometown, including hundreds from the surf community and even passing strangers, hosted an auction fundraiser in his honor, many adding touching emotional notes of support and bringing in thousands of dollars in donations toward his medical care, he said.
Throughout his ups and downs, Selman has kept his surfboards within viewing distance.
“Maybe someday I’ll get better enough to surf, so who knows,” Selman said. “But I keep them there just as a reminder to keep fighting until I can’t, I guess.”
Taking control
In the past four or five years, pain related to his illness has become extreme,
preventing him from surfing or taking far-flung photography trips. Increasingly, the pictures he posts online to the photo-oriented Instagram account @jasonselman, have offered glimpses into his hospital stays but largely focused on more carefree images.
More recently, Selman has turned the camera inward more often, working on a personal project documenting himself and his life and posting a select few heart-rending images. On Jan. 26, Selman posted a self-portrait, showing himself sitting in a recliner with shadows from the window playing across his face while he breathes into a large ventilator tube, his blue-eyed gaze cast off on the horizon. He said the majority of the project has not been shared publicly.
“Figuring out how to keep creative, I started documenting my life at home when I had the energy,” Selman wrote in one of several emails to the Sentinel during times when his illness made it difficult for him to speak aloud. “I always have my camera close to me in case something interesting happens or I think of a new way to tell the story of what my wife and I are going through. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this project but it keeps me shooting and being creative for now.”
As a photographer who takes a candid, documentary-style approach to his work, Selman said he has struggled with capturing his own story as if he were a “fly on the wall.”
“So I’m more looking for things that she’s (Monello’s) doing to convey what I’m going through or still lifes of what’s laying around the messy house and drugs that they put it into you or whatever,” Selman said. “Or the people that are bringing in deliveries for the drugs.”
Throuih his eyes
During the interval between his first surgery and cancer diagnosis, Selman said both his views on life and his trajectory began to change. He met Monello and later launched a wedding photography business. A sampling of his professional works and for-sale prints is visible on his website, jasonselman.com.
When friends Caitlin Stinneford and husband Mike Bencze did some event planning work, they knew they wanted Selman as their photographer. Selman consistently captures moments that other people would overlook, even while struggling with physical pain, Stinneford said. Watching Selman deal with on-again, off-again health issues, Stinneford said she has never met anyone who fights harder for his life.
“Before he was sick, you’d watch him photograph an event and he’s not just standing on the side, taking pictures,” Stinneford said. “He’s laying on the floor, crawling around, down behind a thing.”
“I’m glad he’s photographing his experience right now because I also think it’s something we don’t get to see, somebody that’s that sick and young,” Stinneford added. “Young and sick, and still just trying to be a person.”
Selman, who has worked in a variety of professions, including several years at Bay Photo, said his photography business was derailed more and more often, as he had to cancel jobs in exchange for hospital trips.
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“I spent almost all of 2017 in the hospital fighting for my life,” Selman wrote in an email. “With my body completely atrophied, I finally came home and started getting healthy through a lot of walking on the beach and a lot of hard work in general.”
In 2019, Selman again was admitted to the hospital, this time for a 10-month stay at Stanford Hospital. Still sick, he was finally released for home care during the coronavirus pandemic and has spent much of the past year in and out of the hospital on shorter stints and mostly locked indoors the rest of the time. Monello has become an irreplaceable advocate for Selman’s health and has taken on the duty of caretaker, he said.
Monello, who works remotely in safety and health services full-time for Graniterock, said many friends have not been privy to details of the couple’s day-to-day existence because it is so difficult to explain the extent of Selman’s needed life-sustaining efforts. His photography project has pulled back the veil, somewhat, she said.
“He’s trying to capture what it’s like through his eyes, behind the camera,” Monello said. “I sometimes think about what that might be like if anything happens to him and I go back and look at that (project). That would be hard. That’s when I’ll probably wake up and realize everything we’ve been through. But at the time, now, we just keep pushing through.”
Selman said he does not know how much time he has left and has seen reprieves that give him hope for the future. He said he also knows his health could fatally worsen in an instant. His photography project could offer some solace to loved ones, Selman acknowledged.
The need to make art is a driving force, however, Selman said.
“I used to think about my legacy and who will see my art. But now I think (legacy) is such an arrogant human trait,” Selman wrote in an email. “To worry about how you will be remembered is pretty ridiculous. You can’t take it with you when you go, and when you’re gone, you’re gone. I only want my art to be left for my wife and my parents.”