Calling My Children

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"Calling My Children" spans 20 years of a family coming to terms with illness, loss, and healing. Gail Farrow was a 27-year old mother of four who died from AIDS in 1989. I began this project in 1988, photographing Gail's last year of life and the effect her life and her death had on the family she left behind. I have documented her children and husband periodically over the years. "Calling My Children" is the current chapter of this family's story. With AIDS as a subtext, "Calling My Children" explores the themes of loss and family unity far beyond stereotypes, cliché's and sentimentality, revealing preconceptions about race, class, and infection. This film intimately portrays how Gail's children have grown up to become young adults without the guidance and love of their mother. The letters Gail wrote to her husband and their four children before she died figure strongly in the film narrative. Combined with the photographs I've made over the years and current video of Gail's husband Ronald and their four sons, Ronald Jr., Frank, and twins Kennie and Bennie, "Calling My Children" is an intimate story that captures larger truths about stereotypes, family, and loss.