I am a 52 year old American photographer from Rochester, New York. Although I am a self taught photographer, I am grateful for all the input and feedback teaching from colleagues over the past two years that has helped me better under- stand the medium.
I have been photographing children underwater since 2009. The photographs that I take are the result of passion, expression and a lifetime of experience expressed through photography. My work became a career in photography when it was suggested to me in 2010 by a photographer and photographic historian that I share my work with museum curators, galleries and the global community.
While working as a Pediatric Emergency Physician, I carried a camera to document ill patients. These images were used for teaching. Photography combined the grief associated with sufferings and sometimes deaths. It also dealt with the wave of despair which can be overwhelming. In order to maintain professionalism and composure, separating self from distressing emotions was unknowingly interwoven into photographs.
I had to leave medicine while in my mid thirties due to severe arthritis and a connective tissue disease. Although I missed caring for my patients and working in medicine, I had to come to terms with the fact that I could not care for both my family and my patients due to my limitations. Because of this realization, my leave of absence was no longer such sadness for me for being disabled but instead it became an opportunity to become a mother with freedom to express love and joy. However, I began to find that I was bound by the physical limits of my debilitating disease. Simple tasks such as laundry became increasingly difficult as my joints deteriorated, needing reconstruction and replacement one by one. Photography, though, was less burdensome, even therapeutic as it diverted and refocused my attention.
As a mother, I brought a camera back into my life to capture my own children. To perform some of the activities of daily living, an occupational therapist suggested I bathe with my young children since I could not lift them into the tub. Eventually, I brought my camera to the tub. When I looked through the lens this time, life and death looked different to me. Trough the lens, I remembered my world of medicine, I remembered the children who were sick and had died in my care, the children whom I barely had time to mourn while working as a physician. Overwhelming feelings sealed away in my subconscious began to emerged. Water has become my medium of choice by chance. It has become a medium for physical and emotionally.
This series is a catharsis. It started when I became handicapped and I could no longer bathe my small children so I got in the tub with them to make it easier. I started to photograph them in tub water. When I looked through the camera lens, I remembered the children I had photographed when I was an Emergency Medicine Physician. The children who were sick and even some died on my watch. But now I had time to mourn. I branch out to photograph other children and other bodies of natural water. These images are about life, death, love, mourning, and celebration. My wish is for viewers to explore their own spiritual awareness as they take their time understanding the emotional and fluid nature and layers of Immersed in Living Water.
Wendy Sacks
Weekend portfolio selected by David Fahey.
