I’m definitely feeling a sense of completion about my series with John. I’ll probably still photograph him from time to time, but I’ve been ready for a week to start editing the pictures. I’ve been narrowing down my selections and my plan was to get work prints made of the top 60 or so and play around with sequencing and grouping them. But last night I decided to just see how far I could go working on my computer. I’m pretty happy with the sequence at the moment, although I may change my mind.

I can’t remember how much I’ve written about John here, so here’s a brief introduction. John has multiple schlerosis, which literally means “many scars.” It’s a degenerative disease that causes the nerves to harden with scar tissue. I first met on my first day at the Drop In Centre almost two years ago, and he was one of the first people I photographed outside in the smoking area. Most of his tattoos are in honour of his family. He was largely raised by his grandparents; I think his mother had some addiction problems and he never really had a relationship with his father. He has two kids and he’s been divorced by their mother for a very long time. He was diagnosed with MS around 20 or 25 years ago, and recently he’s been finding it increasingly hard to walk. At the drop-in centre, we’ve started carrying his meal to his table for him. This is all just off the top of the head, and I’ll make sure to verify this stuff before I publish the series in a gallery. John has a lovely deep voice and I’d really like to get an audio recorder and have him tell some of his own stories and make a real multimedia piece.

You can see the slideshow here.

So what do you think?