Still Photojournalism Project

I choose to write about a presentation comprised entirely of still photos. I believe this story was a bit famous, but I still wanted to talk about it because it remains one of my favorite multimedia pieces ever. The presentation is a five part series of a 40 year old woman dying of liver cancer. What is really remarkable about this piece is that there are so many elements within the five pieces that flow so well together. I really liked the element of love between the woman and her new husband, but I also really enjoyed the reaction of the women's children, and how many of the photos concerned how they were handling their mother's death.
What really appealed to me in this presentation was the color of the photos, the sections in which the photos were divided into, and the voice overs from the children, and the woman herself. I like when a photographer decides to leave his photos in color, instead of converting them to black and white for a classier look. I think that the color photos work really well with this presentation, and I don't think black and white photos would have done the same justice to the presentation.
I really liked that the photos were separated into five sections because it breaks up the story a bit, which is nice at times because some of the images and speech are a lot to handle all at once. I also liked it because the pictures of the woman dying could be offensive or hurtful to some people. I also really liked the voice overs from her children because sometimes when a cancer story is told, the focus is on the individual suffering, rather than on the affect that the suffering has on that person's loved ones. I think the children play a crucial role in the presentation because they bring the story back down to earth and give it more of a human face. The most striking conversation to me within the entire piece (which was the best thing to include in my opinion), was whether the woman's youngest son would remember her face and voice once she had died. I think its little things like those voiceovers that really hit people hard and stay with them after the presentation was over.
Although I liked the photos separated into sections, I don't like the pictures of the woman actually dying, even though they are really powerful. I feel as if the pictures of her dying were put there for a shock factor, and I don't think that this presentation need a shock factor in order for the rest of the photos to be considered outstanding. I thought it was a little disrespectful for the Concord Monitor to show these photos in a way, even if the family agreed to it, because I think showing the affects on the cancer on others, including the victim, instead of pinning the word cancer on another face is more effective. Pictures of the woman dying defiantly hindered the piece for me.
Overall, however, I think the piece was really well done, and there is a clear, beginning, middle and end, although I would have liked to see more of her life before the cancer, though i realize that her last weeks with cancer were the main focus of the piece.

Here is he link to the presentation.
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I will also post those pictures of before and after of Val tonight.