'Paint me warts and all': the co-editors invited photographer Alan Knowles, who shot the photo essay, Who Cares, in last month's Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand, to background the project and reflect on the debate the images have provoked

Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand, June, 2006 by Alan Knowles

As a photographer, I prefer my photos to do the talking for me, but the furore caused by last month's photo essay has prompted me to pick up my pen in defence of my courageous co-editors, and the carers and their elderly charges, who so willingly allowed me to document the matter-of-factness of their lives. What is scary about the backlash to the photo essay is the existence of a large body of opinion within nursing that seems so profoundly out of kilter with that of society.

This photography project only began after interminable meetings with administrators, managers and union executives, and briefings by the scrupulous rest-home managers about the importance of consent and privacy. Only when all was agreed, along with the wording of the consent form, was I given the freedom of the respective rest-homes.

My first approach was to "Pop", a 94-year-old former electric welder, whose iron will had been forged in railway workshops over a career that began in 1928. When he retired in 1968, he was a welding inspector responsible for bridges and locomotives from Kaitaia to Invercargill He was circumspect about being photographed, and said he would contact me after he consulted with his family. The next day he phoned to ask when could we start. Later, he would phone to volunteer information and, later still to demand, with the gruff good nature of one who knew what he wanted and expected to get it, where were "those photographs!?".

Pop was in no doubt about the goal of the project, which from the outset was to "raise the profile of aged-care workers in New Zealand"

Before we started working together he said: "You have to be dedicated to be a nurse--it's not an easy job." And although I didn't ask his advice on how he should be depicted, he volunteered: "Oliver Cromwell said, 'When you paint me, paint me warts and all.'" Had he still been with us and hearing what the nay-sayers declared about his involvement in this project, I know Pop would have been forthrightly on the side of the carers.

When I sat down with 92-year-old Daphne, she quickly assessed me as an inferior being because I was unable to converse with her in French. We did share a mutual love of tramping and enjoyed recollections of valleys visited. She spoke eloquently of her solo travels around the world in her later years, and her career as a teacher and being head-hunted for successive principal's positions in girls' colleges. She talked candidly about her grief at being widowed after seven years of marriage, and her sense of the injustice of it was palpable.

We sat side by side and looked at the photographs of her being showered. I was prepared for her to veto the lot, but she simply shrugged and said they were of no interest to her, but we could use them with her blessing. With that she wished me good luck and walked off slowly to the music room to listen to classical recordings.

There were lots of similar exchanges with other residents, many of whom ordered me into their rooms and demanded to be photographed--it was certainly not a case of me intruding or invading their privacy. From the point of view of the carers, my presence was not initially welcomed. They were frantically busy and it appeared i might become an anchor for them to drag around. I soon learned if I didn't move at their speed I got left behind, and frequently lost them as they zoomed to attend bell-summonses, in addition to rostered tasks. Often f found myself idle in the corridor while they performed their mysterious ministrations behind closed doors. They used terms like "toileting", and "showering" which were familiar from the years when my mother was in a rest-home, before she died, but I didn't really know what they involved.

It didn't take long for me to realise that photos of carers serving cups of tea, making beds and cleaning commodes would simply reinforce the misconception that they and their work were of little value. Much of what they did was invisible, and if I couldn't show it, then I would be failing in my duty as a photographer.

But what touched me to the core of my being was the intangible bond I detected between the caters and the residents. It was a lyrical amalgam of tenderness and familiarity, briskness and concern, patience, humour and love, edged with exasperation on both sides. How the hell could a photographer capture that? I tried, and the 40 photographs published last month are there for others to judge whether I achieved it or not.

'An epiphany'

For me, the experience was an epiphany, or revelation, but for others, like the group of nurses who decried the images, the experience has been the opposite of my revelation. Rather, they saw something to be hidden away, concealed. It might be well-meaning concern on their part, but it seems to be an attempt to impose their views on others. Some in society might wish to hide the aged and their carers, yet the nay-sayers, who would speak on their behalf, would do well to consult them first, because of their combined wisdom and life experience.