BEAUTY IN THE SCARS
Benjamin, 15, whose childhood bout with meningococcal disease robbed him of his legs, hand and fingers, poses for famed photographer Anne Geddes for a series to raise vaccination awareness.
Anne Geddes is best known as a photographer of healthy, happy babies who appear in ultra-popular coffee table books, calendars and the like, dressed in fantastical fairy costumes or with their cherubic, slightly quizzical faces poking unexpectedly out of flower pots.
But the native Australian has also photographed young survivors of vicious meningococcal disease, their legs amputated at the knee, fingers missing, bodies scarred. Yet in her photos, those survivors, like the babies, are beautiful, their stances and eyes declaring pride in who they are and signalling a focus on the future, not on what might have been.
Geddes has collected her photos of 15 survivors and their families, folks from Spain, Canada, the U.K. and elsewhere, in Protecting Our Tomorrows: Portraits of Meningococcal Disease, a consciousnessraising e-book downloadable for free at iBooks or tumblr.com. The photographer and Global Advocate for the UN Foundation’s Shot@ Life campaign was in Ottawa on Tuesday to address the Canadian Immunization Conference and spread the word that meningococcal disease, while rare and preventable with vaccine, is also fastmoving — sometimes killing within 24 hours — and sly, fooling parents and sometimes doctors alike with its flu-like symptoms.
Don’t mess with it. In other words: Ask your doctor about all vaccines and watch for the symptoms, which you’ll find at the end of her book.
The 15 survivors were “fantastic to photograph,” says Geddes, a longtime children’s advocate, a mother herself, and the co-founder with her husband, Kel Geddes, of the Geddes Philanthropic Trust, which has raised more than $5.7 million to prevent child abuse and neglect.
“They’re really stoic,” says Ged- des. “They never quit on you. These kids are used to medical procedures, waiting for appointments, having a different life from normal kids.”
Seven-year-old Elias from Germany, for example, had his lower legs amputated after contracting the disease when he was two. He stands on his knees on a pillar, his lower body wrapped in green fab-
Think about everything babies represent. They represent new life, a chance at new beginnings.
ric, his upper body bare to show the permanent scarring of his arms. He looks at the camera with a stillness beyond his years and a hint of vulnerability in his eyes.
Megan, like Elias, perches on her knees, which were reconstructed after the disease forced amputation of both legs and nine fingers. Wrapped in gauzy white material, the 11-year-old Canadian is a beautiful young lady whom Geddes has caught on the cusp of adolescence, with its mix of conflict and promise.
“What a wonderful little girl — so positive and proud to be in the photo,” says the photographer whose own eyes are quiet and observant while her hands, like someone orchestrating a photo shoot, are in frequent motion.
Geddes has positioned all her subjects on pillars of some kind. With their missing limbs or digits, they recall the idealized forms of classical statuary, especially when you learn that these children have become dancers, swimmers, in one case a young, gold-medal sprinter. Geddes is clear about her goal with the photographs.
“I really wanted to portray the survivors as beautiful children and young adults, so the first response by the viewer will be, ‘What a beautiful child!’ Then, ‘Oh my goodness. What happened?’”
Goodness also arises when Geddes talks about photographing babies three decades after she started. Those babies show up in books like Geddes’s beloved 1996 Down in the Garden, a New York Times bestseller and just one of the 19 million books she’s sold internationally. In it, babies’ faces become fairies, flowers, ladybugs.
“Think about everything babies represent,” she says, leaning forward as she engages in a subject she’s doubtless covered countless times but still finds entrancing. “They represent new life, a chance at new beginnings. A naked, newborn baby represents total goodness and purity. It’s only the way we bring them up that determines whether they become good people or bad people.”
When it comes to those fantastical costumes, Geddes explains that it is the babies who tell the stories in her books, and anything is possible in a child’s imagination.
As for posing babies, that’s no more formulaic than photographing the meningococcal survivors.
“You just put them in a situation where they’re happy and comfortable and then let them go. You’ve got to start shoots with broad parameters but not blinkers on. Otherwise, you miss the magic.”