New Places, New Friends

I have realized that the woes of uprooting yourself every few months can quickly be remedied with some new friends, so I walked out the door yesterday determined to find some.  I ended up making quite a few of all walks of life.

Below is Willie.  He does roofing, but at one point was making his living "under the table."  He spent three years in prison because of that lifestyle, but is turning himself around.  He said, "I've watched this area decline, but that don't mean I got to keep declining with it." 

Endings and Beginnings

As I embark on a new photo adventure at the Tampa Bay Times (formerly St. Pete Times), I decided to look back on just a handful of things I worked on as I left the Chicago Tribune.  There are so many amazing things that I experienced and photographed, but these are a few that meant the most to me.   

The Extreme Rage All Stars cheerleading team, which is from Milwaukee, WI and consists of girls from four to 18 years, practices before joining the parade route at the Bud Billiken Parade, the oldest and largest African-American parade in the United States, in Chicago on Saturday, August 10, 2013.  

Children play at 12th St. Beach in Chicago on August 13, 2013 after high levels of e. coli and rip tides forced people out of the water.  

Oliver Dennison, 5, aims his water gun at Steven McDonough at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago's Union Park on Saturday, July 20, 2013.  Oliver was hesitant, because he said, "My parents told me not to spray people in the face." 

Members of the Bessemer Bears team gather after winning their game at the 45th Anniversary of the Chicago Special Olympics held in Grant Park on Thursday, July 18, 2013.  

Al and Barbara Phillip's miniature bull terrier Colonel sits in their Chicago home on Friday, July 26, 2013.  Colonel was just a few months old when he was shot by a Chicago Police officer as he escaped the Phillip's front gate last December. 

The story of a rape victim who discovered that police had never investigated her case, which was one of over fifty unsolved rape cases in that district:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-08-11/news/ct-met-rape-dna-kits-20130811_1_cook-county-sheriff-kits-victim

Patrick Stein is a 20-year-old former water polo player at Loyola Academy now immobilized by Locked-In Syndrome, who lives in Northfield, IL.  His sense of humor and lightheartedness always made my day.  Locked-In Syndrome has been described as "being buried alive."  Patrick can only control his eyes and uses blinking and a letter board to communicate.  Despite not getting to spend as much time as I would like with him, Patrick taught me so much about appreciating every moment and making the best of hopeless situations. 

The story in The Chicago Tribune and the Aiken Standard

Video of Patrick and his Nurse (Graphic Language) 

Mary-Jo and Patrick's Blog

All photos are Copyright Chicago Tribune.

Exonerated: Learning to Live Again.

Daniel Taylor, right, shares a quiet moment with his brother, David while he eats his first meal out of prison at Jodie's Ol' Farmhouse Cafe & Bakery in Mernard, Ill. on Friday June 28, 2013.  Daniel was wrongly convicted of murder nearly 20 years ago. 

At 17, Daniel Taylor was sentenced to life in prison for a double murder he did not commit.  Police records prove that he was locked up at the time of the murders, but Daniel was beaten into a false confession that would keep him behind bars for two decades.  Twelve years ago, the evidence resurfaced.  Steve Mills, a Chicago Tribune investigative reporter, began to write about Daniel's case.  Lawyers from Northwestern University Law School's Center for Wrongful Convictions began to work on Daniel's behalf.  At 37, Daniel is now an exonerated man, but is he really free?

My video, photo gallery, and Steve's article about Daniel's adjustment back into society can be found here.

The Atlantic featured a detailed story about how the two Chicago Tribune reporters managed to get Daniel free. 

 Please visit the Chicago Tribune's website for a collection of all the articles written about Daniel for the last twelve years.  

Below is a brief recount of my personal journey with Daniel and David in my last month here in Chicago.

Just hours after his release, Daniel walks with his brother, David, out of Jodie's Ol' Farmhouse Cafe & Bakery in Mernard, Ill. on Friday June 28, 2013.  They were heading home to David's house in Chicago, where Daniel will live until he gets his own place. 

I met Daniel Taylor on the evening of June 28th, 2013 in a little cafe in Menard, Ill.  The reporter, Steve Mills, and I drove the six hours of long, flat highway that stood between Chicago and Daniel as quickly as we could.  We knew we did not have much time and that we really needed to be there for his release.  The phone rings with an hour of driving left.  Daniel had been released and almost immediately kicked off the Menard Correctional Center premises.  David, his brother, had beat us down there with his girlfriend, "Pink", at the wheel.  

David met Pink while he was visiting Daniel in prison.  The two of them had a beautiful daughter, Danielle, 2, while Daniel was still incarcerated.  She is named for Daniel.  Ultimately, Daniel and David have ended up responsible for the care of Danielle, even though David is unemployed and Daniel's record has yet to be expunged.  

Daniel Taylor, center, watches his nieces and nephews play in front of his Aunt Marie's house on Thursday, July 4, 2013.  Nearly all of his nieces and nephews were born while he was incarcerated.  The Fourth of July was the first time that he met many of them and he said that the experience was overwhelming.

The next time I saw Daniel was on the 4th of July.  I stood on a street in the South Side of Chicago with smoke wafting from the grill, pops of firecrackers going off down the block, the screams of children bickering, police sirens wailing past. There stood Daniel in the center of it all, completely silent.  He just looked down around him at the chaos, every one of his senses overstimulated, taking it all in.  He looked completely overwhelmed, so I went over and asked if he was okay.  He just looked at me quietly, almost sadly, for a minute until the beginnings of a smile appeared in his damp eyes and he said, "I just don't know what to do with all this freedom." To which I responded, "Well, it is Independence Day."

Daniel Taylor sits staring past the television in his Aunt Marie's home while his family watches a show about convicted murderers on Thursday, July 4, 2013. 

One of Daniel's many nieces, Kay-Kay Davis, 2, looks up at him as he passes into his Aunt Marie's house on Thursday, July 4, 2013.  She was born while Daniel was incarcerated, so she does not know that he is her uncle. 

For a while, Daniel would not let me go to David's house, where Daniel lived with David, Pink, Danielle, and a few other children.  I thought that I just had not gained their trust enough.  I thought that perhaps Daniel had realized he was free and did not have to have me around.  The truth ended up being that Daniel was being protective of me.  Eventually, we worked it out that I could come at dawn and stay until the gangs started gathering on the steps of the evicted homes that sandwiched Daniel and David's place. One morning I stayed a bit too late.  As I walked out of David's house with Daniel, I witnessed precisely why Daniel was being so careful.  

Daniel was lost in thought as David smoked a cigarette on his front porch on Monday, July 8, 2013.  There has been a lot of violence and drug-related activity in their area, so Daniel has found a way for the two of them to move to Evanston with David's two-year-old daughter, Danielle.  Danielle is named for Daniel and the two of them have become quite close since Daniel came home.  

Daniel carries Danielle, his niece, inside David's house on Monday, July 8, 2013.  

Lee Williams, Jr., left, sits quietly with his brother Daniel, right, after meeting for the first time in their lives.  Before Daniel got out of prison, Daniel did not know that he had another brother.  He said, "It felt good.  It was a great moment in life."

Daniel knew that he needed to get himself, Danielle, and David out of that situation as quickly as possible.  Soon after, an anonymous donor gave him 6 months worth of rent for an apartment in Evanston, a very safe North Side suburb.  The day he went to visit the apartment with his brother, he was overcome.  He said, "I finally feel like a man."  

Happy to have a new, safe place for his brother and niece, he began to move in.  Most of their new belongings came from Margaret Rosetta, a woman who had also been incarcerated and had died a week prior to Daniel's move.  According to her close friend, Becky Frank, "Margaret contributed all of her time and effort to helping people get back on their feet."  

Daniel and David take in their new apartment in Evanston before signing the lease.  An anonymous benefactor is paying their rent for six months in order to help them move out of the dangerous South Side neighborhood that they are currently living in with Danielle, David's daughter. 

Daniel Taylor kisses his niece, Danielle, who is named after Daniel, after awaking her in their new apartment in Evanston, IL on Wednesday, July 31, 2013.  

I returned to their apartment one day recently just to hang out and see how they were doing.  One of David's other daughters, who lives in Milwaukee, had come to visit.  When I watch Daniel around his two nieces and his brother, I can see how huge his heart is.  Of his future he said, "I want to keep life simple, I don’t want to complicate it, I don’t want to do too much, I don’t want to be this hotshot, none of that.  I just want to enjoy life with David Taylor, right here, that’s it."

Daniel and David's relationship is an incredible thing.  During the two decades Daniel was in jail, David would purposefully get arrested so he would have the chance to be with his brother.  "The normal fear of going to jail, he didn’t have," Daniel said.  "Figuring out why he come to jail so much, I got angry."

After moving donated furniture into his new apartment, Daniel takes a moment to catch his breath.

Prior to Daniel's incarceration at 17, Daniel and David had been in foster homes through the Department of Children and Family Services, because of their mother's drug and alcohol addictions.  

"Me and my brother was forced to live a life we didn’t want to live," David said.  "It ain't like we chose to 'Oh we fittin’ to hang in the streets and gang bang and disobey any law or anything any adult had to say to us,' naw it weren’t like that.  But when you're having issues at home with your family at a young age, you might as well leave then and see what you can find in the streets."

"We’re tired of trouble," David said.  "We’re tired of jails.  We're tired of the police stations, the back of the police cars, the handcuffs.  Man, he did it for twenty years, the handcuffs and all that, so its time to live life and be free."

I owe all of the wonderful editors at the Tribune a huge thank you for their support, guidance, and patience throughout this project.  All photos are Copyright Chicago Tribune.   

Autism + Yoga

So I was going to blog about a shooting, Gwyneth Paltrow, a Puerto Rican Parade, pythons, baseball, CPS, and various other things that don't make sense together unless photojournalism is involved.  However, I think Johnny deserves his own post.  

Johnny is a 4 year old with mild autism whose father is doing a first person article for the Health and Fitness section of the Chicago Tribune about raising a son with autism.  We talked about the stigmas and assumptions associated with the diagnosis, as well as how difficult it is to deal with the fact that there is not a cure.  Johnny does yoga spontaneously to calm himself.  I felt very lucky to be welcomed into the Zimmerman Family's home for a few hours to document their evening routine and get to know Johnny.

I have found myself being given more and more autism assignments, probably because of my interest and experience with the subject.  Its really nice to have found a niche that I am so deeply passionate about and enjoy shooting so much.  Below are a few loose selects from the night. 

Hey Johnny, if you see this...CHEESE AND BROCCOLI! 

PS-The Kelly High School girls varsity soccer team that I posted about last has let me continue with their story, so look for updates on that soon! I can't wait to tell the world all about them.