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In this Episode…

NYC photographer Susan Rosenberg Jones shares with us the new photo series she has been working on: Widow/er. Susan meets with widows and widowers of all ages. They have a conversation, and she makes a portrait. In this conversation Susan talks to us about the process

Susan’s Biography

Susan Rosenberg Jones began photographing with intention as a child.

She was born and raised in Boston, and moved to New York City in 1976. She holds a BS in Education from Lesley College.

In 2011 Susan began work on Building 1, a series about her neighbors in the apartment complex in Tribeca where she’d lived with her family since 1984.In 2012, as a tangent to her photographs of her neighbors, she began shooting in her own home, and her husband Joel was a willing subject. From this practice, Susan’s body of work, titled Second Time Around emerged. For her newest project, Widow/er, Susan makes portraits of widows and widowers, sifting through memories of loss and experience of acceptance with her sitters. She was awarded a 2017 Critical Mass Top 50 Photographer for Second Time Around.

Links to Susan’s Work

https://visura.co/RosenbergJones/projects/widow-er?editor=active

https://www.susanrosenbergjones.com

https://www.instagram.com/susanrosenbergjones/

Examples of Susan’s Work

Eddie

"In the beginning, the dreams were vivid. I remember one particular dream where I woke up and saw her silhouette coming at me, kind of a white energy, if you will, but I saw a silhouette. I didn't see her face, but I knew it was she and I saw her coming at me as I sat up and it was frightening. Frightening at first and then as it engulfed me, I felt a sense of calm and so to this day I associate her love and her protection in that moment of being engulfed in her silhouette".

Edith

"Every Friday I have breakfast food for dinner because it was a Friday that he died and I made him brunch. I made this brunch and that's when he asked me, you know, you usually do Sunday brunch, why Friday, you know something I don't know? I said, no, I just figured that we should do this. He said I don’t know- you’re up to something. I said no… and so now every Friday I'm alone, and I have breakfast food on a Friday."

Edward

"It's like everything about romantic love was out the window. It had nothing to do with that. I understand seeing eye dogs with their masters and mistresses, how devoted they are. And how concerned, and how they have to watch every second and I understand it completely. It was truly…we had a wonderful life together. I said, to the doctor ‘Well, maybe we'll go to Europe’. And she said, ‘go, go’! And of course she meant it was temporary...and so we went. That was wonderful. It was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. And then it was downhill from there".

Harriet

“I was very fortunate in the way I took his death. When you read a book you finish the book, you close the book. That doesn't mean you don't read another book.”

Lori

"I wish I had gotten in support groups, before he passed away, before and after, you know. Well, I did after, but I mean right away. I tried to carry too much on my own shoulders and now I would recommend to people to ask for help. Ask for specific things and don't be afraid to ask people to do things for you. But people want to help and I didn't realize - I felt like I was being too needy. I would really recommend to people to put that aside and, reach out to people".

Melissa

"I went back to work about two weeks after the funeral. It's a very strange feeling to go back. People look at you. They don't know what to say to you. I guess for some people it's easier to ignore it and just ignore you than to confront you and say, 'How are you doing'?

I think living on my own was one of the hardest things that I've had to deal with. Just figuring out how do I feed myself because there were always two of us, you know, and when you go from two to one, sometimes I don't eat - sometimes it's like two or three days, and I'm like, 'Did I eat'?"

Santiago

"It's been two years. I think about her all the time. When I see my sons, my daughter - I see my wife in them. She was the best woman for me in the world - a beautiful person".

Sue

"I went to a bereavement group at the “Y” and I said the problem that I had was that I had no women friends. We were all couples. And so one of the yentas said to me, ‘when you stop playing bridge with all the men you’ll have women friends’. So I started to play Mah- Jongg."

Hit The Streets 115: The Widow/er Project with Susan Rosenberg Jones