children cancer ward
December 28, 2012
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your loved ones. I for myself had a great time with my family in my hometown, and a most quiet and relaxing four days away from work and the stress of daily freelancer life. Now I’m back in Munich and shooting again, and it’s time for another blog post. As I mentioned previously, I’m going to post some older stuff along with new work to catch up on the two months that I’ve been working at the paper and not blogging. So here’s an assignment that I shot back in October:
As a newspaper photographer, you sometimes don’t have the time to cover an assignment as in-depth as you would like to or the subject matter demands. This one here is definitely one of them. The story was about a support group for parents of children with cancer. Once a week, they arrange a breakfast at the children cancer ward of the hospital München Schwabing where the parents can hang out with each other and with their kids.
I was supposed to take pictures of some of the parents and their children and I had two hours for the assignment – considering my regular schedule where I often only have an hour or less for an assignment including getting there and back, this was a lot. But confronted with the topic at hand I felt like the two hours were gone in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless it was incredibly rewarding to spend this – albeit limited – time with the kids and their parents. It was inspiring to see how strong some of the people I met that day were and how gracefully they handled their situation. It also made me realize once again how trivial a lot of our little daily life problems really are.
Jaqueline Thorwirth tends to her 15-year-old son Christoph while he is getting a round of chemo at the out-patient station of the children cancer ward at the hospital München Schwabing in Munich, Thursday, October 11, 2012. Christoph was diagnosed with Leukemia in April of 2012.
Seven-year-old Stefan picks a movie for his portable DVD-player as he is about to receive a several-hour-long round of chemo in the out-patient station of the children cancer ward at the hospital München Schwabing in Munich, Thursday, October 11, 2012. Stefan was diagnosed with Leukemia when he was six.
Filed under: Germany