The Artists
All five artists in the exhibition are recognized for their innovative contributions to the photographic medium. While each is well known for his or her individual style, they share a commitment to explore emotional subjects through an experimental, visionary approach. Some of the photographers focused on patients receiving hospice care in their own homes, while others worked primarily in hospice facilities.

Jim Goldberg of San Francisco, CA is a pioneer in contemporary documentary photography. His work, whether portraying wealthy families, welfare-hotel residents, or nursing-home patients, combines his subjects' handwritten words and artifacts of their existence with their images. Goldberg's exhibition Raised by Wolves, documenting the lives of teenagers living on the streets of San Francisco and Hollywood, premiered at the Corcoran Gallery in 1995. For Hospice, Goldberg photographed his father who died in hospice care at home in Florida in 1993.

The photographs of Nan Goldin often reveal interpersonal relationships. This New York artist is recognized as an innovator in the development of photographic narratives, groups of images combined in sequences to tell a story. Goldin's work goes beyond the often lush surface of her images, revealing facets of contemporary attitudes, stereotypes, fears, and sexual roles. She is best known for her book The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. Several of Goldin's friends died of AIDS in hospice care, which led her to photograph patients through Cabrini Hospice in New York City.

Sally Mann's family in Lexington, VA, has been the primary subject of her increasingly complex and highly respected body of work. Mann's personal experience with hospice care during her father's last months led her to explore other families' experiences from patients' points of view. She interviewed patients in their homes and created metaphorical images of places and experiences they described.

In May 1992, Jack Radcliffe of Baltimore, MD began a photographic document about an AIDS hospice in York, PA. His approach lies on long-term, intimate contact with the people he portrays. Ranging from the urban poor to the middle-class, Radcliffe's subjects reveal themselves with directness and clarity. He allows people's environments to express their inner nature.

Kathy Vargas is a photographer, curator, and arts administrator in San Antonio, TX. She is best known for her composite hand-colored photographs that deal with issues of both loss and hope. Her work is sometimes presented in complex installations that combine objects and photographs. For this project, Vargas worked with patients and their families in hospice care in San Antonio, including the San Antonio AIDS Foundation and St. Benedicts.

Documentary Film
LETTING GO: A Hospice Journey made its national debut on HBO with the opening of Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry in 1996. Emotionally powerful, the film reveals the stories of three separate hospice patients, from a 62 year old California man unexpectedly paralyzed by brain tumors, to an eight year old boy born with a degenerative brain disease, to a woman from Queens, New York who comes to terms with her impending death just moments before her final breath. These sobering situations explore the crucial role hospice plays in the lives of patients and their friends and families who must contend with imminent loss. The film by Susan Froemke and Deborah Dickson with Albert Saysles runs on a continuous basis in a special screening area during the exhibition.