18
B+Wsubjects but soon realised it was impossible
to sustain. She’d gradually grow fond of them,
become concerned for their welfare, and form
attachments. ‘I realised that those feelings I’d
tried hard to keep at a distance were actually
important in photographing people, in trying
to understand their lives and tell their stories.
Trying to hold back those feelings holds back
the photography.’
Krantz didn’t witness Hector’s death
on 8 December 2014; she had visited him
earlier in the day and not long left, only to
return soon after to hear the paramedics
say he could not be revived. He’d walked
from his chair in his mother’s living room to
answer the front door – a mere 40 feet – and
collapsed, gasping, ‘Mamma, I can’t breathe.’
Those were his last words.
She watched, full of sorrow, as the medical
examiners strapped Hector’s body on to a
gurney and wheeled his corpse out the door.
‘The experience was very difficult overall,’says Krantz. ‘I care deeply about Hector and
his family, and I felt terrible that his story
didn’t get published sooner. I wanted him to
see the story run, and experience the impact
it had. Most of all, we all hoped that by
publishing his story his life would be saved,
that he’d get the help he needed.’
Hector knew he would die – he knew
that pulmonary disease would eventually
kill him. ‘Not being able to breathe is a
whole new level of helplessness,’ he said in
Krantz’s short. ‘I would like to go to thebeach. I’ve forgotten what that looks like.’
Hector’s family wanted Krantz to
document the funeral – the open casket, the
mourners, the deceased Hector – so she did,
using a fixed 35mm lens and her Canon 5D
Mark III, emotionally vested yet physically
unobtrusive. ‘I was photographing through
tears in the week following his death, when
I continued to document his family and
the memorial service. It was surreal to
be grieving while knowing that I had to
continue to work at the same level, that these
photos were very important,’ she explains of
the wake. ‘Hector told his own story. I was
there with a camera to help him tell it.’
Lisa Krantz’s A Life Apart: The Toll of
Obesity won the Community Awareness Award
at Pictures of the Year International 2015. For
more of her work, go to lisakrantz.com.
The compelling 12-minute documentary,
A Life Apart: The Toll of Obesity, can be
viewed at vimeo.com/ ‘I realised that those feelings
I’d tried hard to keep at a
distance were actuallyimportant in photographing
people, in trying to understand
their lives and tell their stories.’
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