THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 15, 1996 TAG: 9609110056
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 81 lines
HER ROMANCE with the camera began more than 50 years ago, when shy Suzanne Jacobson shadowed her Russian immigrant grandmother at work in her photography studio.
Snyder's Studio, on High Street in Portsmouth, was a busy and fascinating place - especially on holidays like Easter.
Sometimes, Nettie Snyder would let her granddaughter duck under the curtain behind the bulky, wooden camera, while she framed sober families in their Sunday best, who stood stiffly before a painted backdrop.
Then, Jacobson would trail her grandmother into the darkroom, watching the glass negatives come alive as they were swished in tubs of strange liquids.
``Every time an image would come up, I would think it was magic,'' Jacobson remembers.
The black-and-white portraits sold at three-for-a-quarter; hand-coloring was available, at an extra charge, Jacobson said. To her grandmother, widowed and only semi-literate in English, photography was purely business, not artwork - a way of raising money to educate her six children.
For Jacobson - at 60, now a grandmother herself - photography is her passion and a way of chronicling the lives of old people, mainly those over 85. She has spent a decade photographing the elderly. Her consuming interest in them leaves little time for other subjects.
``As this particular century is finishing, these are the people who will be telling us our history,'' she said. ``They are the only people we can question about what happened.''
Jacobson did not spend her life with camera in hand. After her childhood in her grandmother's studio, she moved in other directions. She attended college, married, raised four daughters. She got involved in a blizzard of volunteer activities, from tutoring to helping organize a neighborhood safety program for the city of Portsmouth.
At 50, with her daughters grown and on their own, she took a deep breath and looked around for a hobby. What to do now? She bought a camera and started taking photography workshops.
Her work with the elderly began with an assignment for a class in Florida where she lives part of the year. Go out and photograph the same situation for one week, her teacher ordered.
Jacobson went to a nursing home and - after some pleading - got permission to take pictures.
``I don't know what overcame me - I don't know if it was my grandmother creeping up on me,'' she said. ``I was so happy there. The people were not uncomfortable with me.''
She had found her subject. With the encouragement of her teacher, she kept at it, working in several different nursing homes. One of her first photography shows was in 1992 at Eastern Virginia Medical School.
A doctor saw it and called her for a scolding.
``He blasted me. He said, `I tell my patients that they'll be active and you show them half-dead,'' Jacobson said ruefully. ``He wanted me to show active seniors. It made sense to me.''
So, she started taking pictures of elderly people who were busy in their lives. Some ran stores and small businesses. Others were active in church or volunteer work. Many had passionate hobbies, while a few stood out simply for their stubborn independence, even while struggling with the afflictions of aging.
She takes their pictures and videotapes an interview, which she sends to their families. Her photographs have been exhibited at the White House Conference on Aging; in a permanent collection at Yale University's medical complex; in a show sponsored by the Palm Beach County Cultural Council; and at several hospitals.
She forms friendships with the people she captures on film. She is invited to lunch, birthday parties, family gatherings and, more often than she would like, funerals.
She never charges a penny, considering it a privilege to learn from them. She asks them what they eat to stay healthy and how much they exercise.
``They all walk as much as they can - they are very mindful of it,'' she said.
But their outlook is more important than any emphasis on physical fitness, Jacobson said.
``The most important thing is that they are all humorous. They all have a way of fixing things that happened to them adversely. . . . I have never interviewed a person over 85 who is sullen or `Oh, woe is me.' ''
None of them spend much time dwelling on the past, she said, because their daily lives are so exciting to them. She laughs, recalling a 102-year-old woman who still worked as a secretary at her son's company: ``I know I'm not going to die yet. I'm too busy.'' by CNB