To learn more about the Angkor Hospital for Children in Siem Reap, please click here (Photo: Angkor Hospital for Children)Jean Patteson,
The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., USA
Jan. 21--DAYTONA BEACH -- The child lies quietly on the straw mat covering the hard hospital bed. His eyes are huge and dark in his fever-flushed face.
The photographer, pausing at the foot of the bed, is captivated by those eyes. The expression is unfathomable but irresistible.
Carefully, as if not to disturb a skittish bird, she raises her camera. Focuses. Takes a picture.
The child does not move, doesn't blink. The little face remains calm, the gaze inscrutable.
Julayne Farmer wonders, as she does every time she photographs a gravely ill child: Should I be doing this? Do I have the right?
Farmer, a graduate of the photography program at Daytona Beach Community College, returned recently from three months volunteering as an art therapist at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia. Naturally, she took her cameras. Just as naturally, she started taking pictures. But always, there was the question: Am I crossing some line?
One day, she got her answer.
"I would take pictures of the children during the day," says Farmer, 25, during a visit to Florida. "Then I'd ride into town to the Fuji lab to get prints made for the parents.
"I didn't know how important it was until I photographed a little girl one Tuesday. I gave the print to her mother on Thursday. The child died the next Monday.
"The mother came to me. She thanked me. She put her hands together and bowed toward me. She was so grateful. It was the only photograph she had of her daughter."
Such graciousness in the face of tragedy affected Farmer deeply. So did the stoicism of the families she encountered daily. She was awed by their dignity and capacity for joy -- despite their extreme poverty, despite the ravages of AIDS, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Cambodia has the highest AIDS/HIV infection rate in Asia, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"Growing up American, you spend a lot of time in a fantasy world," says Farmer. "To suddenly do something like this really grounds you in reality. At some point in your life, that's really necessary.
After a week at the hospital, "I thought I couldn't go on. It was all too heartbreaking," she says.
"But after one month with the children, I realized I was changing. They were the happiest kids. It was like they knew something that someone like me didn't. They really valued every day. They made it hard for me not to do the same."
Photography can be cathartic, says Eric Breitenbach, a former instructor of Farmer's who arranged for her to exhibit her photos and lecture at DBCC.
When Farmer left for Cambodia, she had no training in art therapy, says Breitenbach. "At first, she wondered if the experience was right for her. But she stuck with it. She overcame her initial trepidation. It was a transformative experience."
She used her camera to connect with the children, he says. And later, she taught the children to use cameras to document their world and express themselves. In essence, she used photography to become an art therapist.
Passion leads to purpose
Farmer's own childhood was spent in New Smyrna Beach. A "super-good" student, she admits using her good grades to hide her "troublemaker tendencies."
The summer she turned 14, she spent with her grandparents in Iowa. "At the end of the vacation, I just stayed," she says.
"It was a good decision. School was much more challenging, and I fell in with kids who were openly religious. I became interested in the ideas of humility and sacrifice. I wanted to become a nun."
That dream took her to Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. There, to her surprise, she was appointed campus photographer. "I took awful pictures," she says, "but I fell in love with the camera."
About the same time, she realized the life of a nun was not for her. She returned to Florida, completed the photography course at DBCC, and last year graduated with a degree in the field from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Although she had abandoned formal religion, she still had strong spiritual leanings. "I started to realize I must try to meld the worlds of art and spirituality," she says.
That quest took her on a photographic expedition to India last summer -- an experience that whetted her appetite for further travel in Southeast Asia. When a professor mentioned an art-therapy program at a hospital in Cambodia, "I was nervous," she says. "I'd never done anything like that. But I thought, why not?"
She arrived in mid-September, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a monsoon deluge. Drenched and jet-lagged, she collapsed onto her bed in the compound shared by about 35 other volunteers, most from Europe and Australia.
The next morning, she reported to the hospital.
"I knew it would be different from an American hospital. I knew there would be sick children," she says. She had no idea how different, nor how sick.
Art therapy in action
The hospital is in Siem Reap, a provincial town close to Cambodia's famous temples of Angkor Wat. Founded by nonprofit Friends Without A Border, it has four large wards with beds for about 75 children.
Because the medical staff also treats more than 300 outpatients daily, the routine care and comforting of the children in the wards falls to family members and volunteers.
"On my second day, I was put in charge of a 6-year-old boy with AIDS," says Farmer. "His father had abandoned the family. His mother was working and also taking care of his little sister. He was all alone."
For almost five weeks, Farmer spent much of her day with the boy, rubbing his stomach to ease his acute pain, or reading to him -- first in English, later in Khmer, the Cambodian language she was studying.
Most of the time, the boy was in too much pain to respond, she says. But on one of his better days, she showed him her camera, a hefty Canon 5D Digital.
"At first, he was scared. He didn't know what it was. I turned it around, took a picture of myself and showed him the image. He recognized my face. He smiled -- his first smile since I'd known him. I'll never forget it," she says.
She hung the camera around the boy's neck, and he started taking pictures, his pain forgotten for a brief while. It was art therapy in action.
A few days later, his bed was empty.
"I thought he'd died," says Farmer. "But a nurse told me his mother came in the middle of the night and took him away."
His disappearance was one of the experiences she shared, along with her photographs, during her visit to DBCC.
The pictures were "beautiful as well as emotional," says student Laura Wong, 21. "When she was talking to us, I was aware of her pain, but also her sense of purpose. I would love to do something similar -- to travel, to help get the word out about people in need. It's what we have to do if we're going to survive in this world."
Life-changing experience
During the last two months of her stay, Farmer immersed herself in the hospital's art-therapy program, spending time drawing, painting and doing origami with the children.
There were so few coloring books, she says, "We had to trace pictures for the kids to color so they didn't use up the books."
Days before her departure, she bought disposable cameras for her charges, gave them 24 hours to document their lives in pictures, then mounted an exhibition showcasing their efforts.
"Seeing their faces when they recognized their pictures on the wall was just amazing," she says.
One of the first adults to view the photos was former President Bill Clinton, who happened to be touring the hospital.
"He was very approachable and personable," says Farmer. "He talked to the staff and the children, and asked a lot of questions about the AIDS outreach program."
Spending time with children suffering from AIDS and other serious conditions was emotionally draining, says Farmer. Watching them die was devastating. Even more difficult was watching the parents watch their children die.
"I became close to some mothers. We laughed a lot together. I'd watch their joyful spirits slowly drain away, and I'd wonder: How much can a person take before they break? They were incredibly strong," she says.
For emotional release, she and her fellow volunteers would escape on weekends, exploring the temples at Angkor Wat or relaxing on the beaches of Thailand.
Farmer took very few pictures on those side trips. Her focus was on the children whose dark-eyed faces haunt her photographs.
Cambodia changed her, she says. She is wiser, sadder, stronger. She has learned that one person can make a difference. And she knows where she wants to go next: Back to San Francisco, where she plans to exhibit her photographs, raise awareness about the hospital's needs and volunteer programs -- and start thinking about her next trip abroad.
For the children in her pictures, the future is less bright.
"Some of these kids are still there, still in the same beds," she says. "They're there whether I'm taking pictures or not."
Jean Patteson can be reached at or 407-420-5158.
The photographer, pausing at the foot of the bed, is captivated by those eyes. The expression is unfathomable but irresistible.
Carefully, as if not to disturb a skittish bird, she raises her camera. Focuses. Takes a picture.
The child does not move, doesn't blink. The little face remains calm, the gaze inscrutable.
Julayne Farmer wonders, as she does every time she photographs a gravely ill child: Should I be doing this? Do I have the right?
Farmer, a graduate of the photography program at Daytona Beach Community College, returned recently from three months volunteering as an art therapist at the Angkor Hospital for Children in Cambodia. Naturally, she took her cameras. Just as naturally, she started taking pictures. But always, there was the question: Am I crossing some line?
One day, she got her answer.
"I would take pictures of the children during the day," says Farmer, 25, during a visit to Florida. "Then I'd ride into town to the Fuji lab to get prints made for the parents.
"I didn't know how important it was until I photographed a little girl one Tuesday. I gave the print to her mother on Thursday. The child died the next Monday.
"The mother came to me. She thanked me. She put her hands together and bowed toward me. She was so grateful. It was the only photograph she had of her daughter."
Such graciousness in the face of tragedy affected Farmer deeply. So did the stoicism of the families she encountered daily. She was awed by their dignity and capacity for joy -- despite their extreme poverty, despite the ravages of AIDS, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Cambodia has the highest AIDS/HIV infection rate in Asia, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"Growing up American, you spend a lot of time in a fantasy world," says Farmer. "To suddenly do something like this really grounds you in reality. At some point in your life, that's really necessary.
After a week at the hospital, "I thought I couldn't go on. It was all too heartbreaking," she says.
"But after one month with the children, I realized I was changing. They were the happiest kids. It was like they knew something that someone like me didn't. They really valued every day. They made it hard for me not to do the same."
Photography can be cathartic, says Eric Breitenbach, a former instructor of Farmer's who arranged for her to exhibit her photos and lecture at DBCC.
When Farmer left for Cambodia, she had no training in art therapy, says Breitenbach. "At first, she wondered if the experience was right for her. But she stuck with it. She overcame her initial trepidation. It was a transformative experience."
She used her camera to connect with the children, he says. And later, she taught the children to use cameras to document their world and express themselves. In essence, she used photography to become an art therapist.
Passion leads to purpose
Farmer's own childhood was spent in New Smyrna Beach. A "super-good" student, she admits using her good grades to hide her "troublemaker tendencies."
The summer she turned 14, she spent with her grandparents in Iowa. "At the end of the vacation, I just stayed," she says.
"It was a good decision. School was much more challenging, and I fell in with kids who were openly religious. I became interested in the ideas of humility and sacrifice. I wanted to become a nun."
That dream took her to Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. There, to her surprise, she was appointed campus photographer. "I took awful pictures," she says, "but I fell in love with the camera."
About the same time, she realized the life of a nun was not for her. She returned to Florida, completed the photography course at DBCC, and last year graduated with a degree in the field from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Although she had abandoned formal religion, she still had strong spiritual leanings. "I started to realize I must try to meld the worlds of art and spirituality," she says.
That quest took her on a photographic expedition to India last summer -- an experience that whetted her appetite for further travel in Southeast Asia. When a professor mentioned an art-therapy program at a hospital in Cambodia, "I was nervous," she says. "I'd never done anything like that. But I thought, why not?"
She arrived in mid-September, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a monsoon deluge. Drenched and jet-lagged, she collapsed onto her bed in the compound shared by about 35 other volunteers, most from Europe and Australia.
The next morning, she reported to the hospital.
"I knew it would be different from an American hospital. I knew there would be sick children," she says. She had no idea how different, nor how sick.
Art therapy in action
The hospital is in Siem Reap, a provincial town close to Cambodia's famous temples of Angkor Wat. Founded by nonprofit Friends Without A Border, it has four large wards with beds for about 75 children.
Because the medical staff also treats more than 300 outpatients daily, the routine care and comforting of the children in the wards falls to family members and volunteers.
"On my second day, I was put in charge of a 6-year-old boy with AIDS," says Farmer. "His father had abandoned the family. His mother was working and also taking care of his little sister. He was all alone."
For almost five weeks, Farmer spent much of her day with the boy, rubbing his stomach to ease his acute pain, or reading to him -- first in English, later in Khmer, the Cambodian language she was studying.
Most of the time, the boy was in too much pain to respond, she says. But on one of his better days, she showed him her camera, a hefty Canon 5D Digital.
"At first, he was scared. He didn't know what it was. I turned it around, took a picture of myself and showed him the image. He recognized my face. He smiled -- his first smile since I'd known him. I'll never forget it," she says.
She hung the camera around the boy's neck, and he started taking pictures, his pain forgotten for a brief while. It was art therapy in action.
A few days later, his bed was empty.
"I thought he'd died," says Farmer. "But a nurse told me his mother came in the middle of the night and took him away."
His disappearance was one of the experiences she shared, along with her photographs, during her visit to DBCC.
The pictures were "beautiful as well as emotional," says student Laura Wong, 21. "When she was talking to us, I was aware of her pain, but also her sense of purpose. I would love to do something similar -- to travel, to help get the word out about people in need. It's what we have to do if we're going to survive in this world."
Life-changing experience
During the last two months of her stay, Farmer immersed herself in the hospital's art-therapy program, spending time drawing, painting and doing origami with the children.
There were so few coloring books, she says, "We had to trace pictures for the kids to color so they didn't use up the books."
Days before her departure, she bought disposable cameras for her charges, gave them 24 hours to document their lives in pictures, then mounted an exhibition showcasing their efforts.
"Seeing their faces when they recognized their pictures on the wall was just amazing," she says.
One of the first adults to view the photos was former President Bill Clinton, who happened to be touring the hospital.
"He was very approachable and personable," says Farmer. "He talked to the staff and the children, and asked a lot of questions about the AIDS outreach program."
Spending time with children suffering from AIDS and other serious conditions was emotionally draining, says Farmer. Watching them die was devastating. Even more difficult was watching the parents watch their children die.
"I became close to some mothers. We laughed a lot together. I'd watch their joyful spirits slowly drain away, and I'd wonder: How much can a person take before they break? They were incredibly strong," she says.
For emotional release, she and her fellow volunteers would escape on weekends, exploring the temples at Angkor Wat or relaxing on the beaches of Thailand.
Farmer took very few pictures on those side trips. Her focus was on the children whose dark-eyed faces haunt her photographs.
Cambodia changed her, she says. She is wiser, sadder, stronger. She has learned that one person can make a difference. And she knows where she wants to go next: Back to San Francisco, where she plans to exhibit her photographs, raise awareness about the hospital's needs and volunteer programs -- and start thinking about her next trip abroad.
For the children in her pictures, the future is less bright.
"Some of these kids are still there, still in the same beds," she says. "They're there whether I'm taking pictures or not."
Jean Patteson can be reached at or 407-420-5158.
1 comment:
it's a wonderful article of a wonderful story. Farmer represents the general public who have the ability to do the same like her. in our so call "normal life" of the developped world, most people can't even imagine to do something like Farmer. unfortuanely, the suffering will not stop unless everyone start doing the same like her.
H C
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