Evy
ARTIST STATEMENT
In early 2022, just as our family (like so many) began to feel that Covid might be over, my seven-year-old niece Evy was diagnosed with cancer. Twelve months of grueling treatments began, week after week defined by the rhythm of chemotherapy and later radiation therapy sessions, and school permanently on hold.
As spring turned into summer, our family came together—as we do every year—at my mother in law’s house in the Berkshires, where we spend much of the summer until the fall arrives and we return to our regular lives. Because our family is scattered between Boston, New York and London, these Berkshire summers are my prime time for family photos. Over the years, my five nieces have been my most enthusiastic and generous subjects, and we’ve made photos together around the pond behind the house.
I wasn’t sure if Evy would want to be photographed that year. At the beginning she was self- conscious about her hair loss, and only wanted pictures with her head covered. But very soon she became comfortable and we returned to our old patterns. Evy became the focus of a new project. Despite the exhaustion of her ongoing treatments and the toll they were taking on her little body, her spirit was as feisty and radiant as ever. We made pictures of some of the small things that gave her pleasure: her new socks embroidered with the day of the week; the pink slippers she was given at a camp for kids with cancer; her comical impression of an adult reading a magazine over coffee. By the end of the following winter, Evy’s treatments were over and her scans were clear. Seeing her again in the Berkshires that summer, she had recovered her energy and her hair (albeit dark and curlier than before). In many respects the old Evy was back, but in others she was a new person: wiser, stronger and more joyful than ever. Looking over the photos of that first summer, I am reminded of how emaciated and tired she was. But I also see in her eyes a patience and determination that would be extraordinary at any age. One picture with her mother in the middle makes me wonder if I fully appreciated just how tiring and emotionally draining the year had been for Evy’s family. How strange it is that we can cross so easily from the world of the healthy into the world of the sick, and if we are fortunate, back again.
Recently, Evy has been helping out at the pediatric cancer center where she received her treatment and participating in camps and events for children with cancer. Her mother is starting a new career as a social worker. My life in photography moves on, but has been immeasurably deepened by this experience. We are looking forward to many more family summers together in the Berkshires, but we’ll always remember this one summer and the lessons we learned from a spunky seven-year-old.
ARTIST BIO
Daniel Jackson is a Boston-based photographer. His book Portraits of Resilience was published in December 2017 by MIT Press, and received coverage from the national press, including the Boston Globe, PBS Newshour and National Public Radio. Recent projects include The Pond, a series capturing life around a Berkshire pond in the summer; American Spaces, an exploration of landscape; and Passing Through, which depicts the starkness of campus architecture. He also makes handmade books with the help of Rachel Jackson, an art bookbinder. Jackson’s work has appeared in various group shows, most recently at Panopticon Gallery in Boston and at the Photographic Resource Center. Jackson is also committed to using photography for social benefit. Projects include: a book of portraits of administrative assistants; a series on immigrant professors; a collection of front- step portraits and stories of neighbors under lockdown published in the Boston Globe Magazine; and most recently a project with the Me2 Orchestra to create videos (sample here) about orchestra players from his triptych portraits. Jackson has studied with Arno Minkkinen (2010), Keith Carter (2013), Cig Harvey (2014), Joyce Tenneson (2015), Connie Imboden (2016), Brenton Hamilton (2017), David Hilliard (2022), Greg Miller (2024) and Elinor Carucci (2024). Jackson was commissioned in 2011 to create a series of images of contemporary laboratories to accompany an exhibition of work by Berenice Abbott, which were shown in the MIT Museum from May to December 2012, and were subsequently acquired by the museum. Earlier portfolios include a study of Frank Gehry’s Stata Center published by Lenswork in 2007; images of Boston’s Metropolitan Waterworks, published by the Waterworks in 2011; and an essay on a garden designed by Warren Manning, a leading landscape architect in the early 19th century who had worked in Frederick Law Olmsted’s studio. His self-published book of images of this garden was selected by by Darius Himes for inclusion in the Indie Photobook Library at Yale University.