Other People: Goldwater Memorial Hospital
1978-1981
"Other People" is a document of the disabled resident patients of Goldwater Memorial Hospital, a New York City long term chronic care institution. Located on Roosevelt Island since 1939, Goldwater housed approximately 1000 persons. In 2014, the Goldwater Hospital buildings were razed and all the patients relocated.
The patients at Goldwater hospital are representative of the worst cases of disability and without doubt the most hidden group of disabled persons. They are the unfortunate recipients of stroke, accident, birth defect, or progressive diseases like Multiple Sclerosis and hereditary disorders like Huntington's Chorea.
At Goldwater Hospital I was struck by the feeling of loss and adaptation for beings so altered by their circumstances, and with little disability activism in the 1980's, they became a class and culture without rights or laws to validate their personal choices.
To gain access for photographing, I signed up as a weekend volunteer in the recreation department. After six months, I felt friendship and acceptance among the residents that encouraged me to ask and receive permission to photograph.
After three years of intermittent photographing on the weekends, and after the story broke of an American hostage held in Iran who was being released due to symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, I went to Life Magazine with my work.
Life sent me on assignment with the writer Anne Fadiman to photograph Carrie, a young woman that I cared for a great deal and who had been struck down with a debilitating case of MS. The photo essay ran for ten pages in July of 1981.