Kids Coping With Illness
March 4 – 27, 1993
A photo essay on kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases by Keri Pickett.
As a young photographer undergoing chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma cancer, I been worked with and photographed kids with cancer and other life-threatening diseases over a five year span. Many, like myself, were undergoing treatment at the University of Minnesota Hospital.
I began the “Kids Coping with Illness” photography project shortly after my own diagnosis and surgery as part of my own personal healing therapy starting in February 1988. In the course of the project I was able to affirm a spirit of hope to the kids and their families because my own successful treatment and experience. I expanded my photography project outside the hospital so that a broader audience could better understand how some of these children live and (unfortunately die), and how their families cope with their situation. The images reflect intimate moments captured in the real world. I am interested in creating an honest emotional connection between myself as a photographer, my subjects and those who view my images.
One example of the children in my project are Brad and Brodie Mangrich, identical twin brothers, age 4, who were born with a congenital immunosuppressant disease. I began photographing Brad in July of 1988 and I immediately fell in love with his spirit and inquisitive personality. Brad had two unsuccessful bone marrow transplants before he died at University Hospital on March 25, 1989. I attended the funeral in Winthrop, Iowa on March 29, 1989. Seeing and photographing Brodie at his brother’s wake and funeral service was especially touching because everyone is praying that Brodie would survive his bone marrow transplant but his life was taken by the illness too.
This is not a project that people “want” to see. The images have little commercial appeal, but I believe they have great social significance as illness is a part of life and well as a great significance for me, artistically. My ability to create more meaningful photos evolved and grew as my relationships with the kids and their families developed.
With the help of the Bush Foundation Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts, I traveled to the homes of several children who, like Brad and Brodie, live outside the Twin Cities metropolitan area, sometimes out of state in California, Texas and Mexico. Going beyond the hospital side of their treatment, I captured what happens at home and how the children and their families live with cancer, leukemia or immunosuppressant diseases and their treatment.
My personal goal is to affirm, through my work and my own experience as a cancer patient, a positive healing process and thus create a tool for collective understanding, compassion and healing.
Producer, Director, Director of Photography and photographer Keri Pickett’s work documents those who seek to right a wrong.
Pickett is the Co-Director/DP/Editor of the award-winning documentary feature film FINDING HER BEAT, 2022 which premiered at Mill Valley and was selected for over 50 festivals with Fall of 2023 Theatrical distribution. She is the Director/Producer/DP for FIRST DAUGHTER AND THE BLACK SNAKE (2017) winning multiple Best Documentary Feature Film awards. She is the Director/Producer/DP for THE FABULOUS ICE AGE (2013) which was a Netflix Original in 10 languages. Pickett has directed award-winning documentary shorts/music videos including NO MORE PIPELINE BLUES and TEACH ME.
Pickett is best known as a photographer and author of ‘Love in the 90s’ (Warner Books 1995), ‘Faeries’ (Aperture Books. 2000) and co-author of ‘Saving Body & Soul’ (Shaw Books, 2004). She’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush, McKnight, Jerome and Target Foundations. She’s been a regular contributing photographer for publications such as the Village Voice, People and Time magazines. Her photographs are in national and international museums and collections.