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I finally started shooting for Live Through This (LTT) yesterday. This has been a long time coming. I feel incredible, and incredibly inspired.
If you’re not familiar with LTT, it’s a project about life on the other side of a suicide attempt. Suicide is a terrifying epidemic. Instead of talking about it, we make broad generalizations about who it affects (ie., not us), and then sweep it under the rug and hope it will disappear. It won’t. Suicide knows no age, creed, race, or sexual orientation. It does not discriminate.
The best we can do to combat this epidemic is face it and talk about it. LTT will be a collection of portraits and the accompanying stories of those who have tried to commit suicide and found reasons to live. It’s a topic extremely personal to me. I’ve lost friends to it, and I nearly lost myself to it five years ago. I’d like to see the project fully actualized in the form of a book and traveling exhibition in coming years.
With this collection of stories, we can start a conversation. We can show the world that the face of suicide is multicultural, ageless, gender and sexual identity neutral. We can start to help people see that the easiest way to combat suicide is to have the balls to ask someone if they’re suicidal and then, if they are, find them help. Armed with this collection, we can help people to see that there is always an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on, that there is a reason to live through this painful moment in time.
This has been my passion project for well over a year now. I’ve spent all this time reaching out to strangers, setting super ambitious goals that were destined to fail, and agonizing over nitpicky logistical details. All of which resulted in one thing: paralysis. I recently made the decision to scale back and start with the basics. That way, growth will be organic. There will be obstacles along the way, but that’s how progress is made. Eventually, I’d like LTT to be large scale and multifaceted, but everyone has to start somewhere.
All of that said: I’m starting with the stories and portraits of people local to the New York area. I’ll also be in Miami from 12/20-12/23 and Orlando from 12/24-12/27. I want to meet and photograph as many people as possible. Strength in numbers, right? This will help me to gather a small catalog of images to show potential backers when I actually launch the Kickstarter project I’ve been talking about. Then I can travel to everyone who wants to share their story.
I can’t do any of this alone, though. I’d just be spinning my wheels. I need your help. So:
LTT logo art by Vinny Romanelli and Megan Gersch. Cross-posted from deseraestage.com.
I’m nearing the end of History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life, a memoir by Jill Bialosky. Years after her sister committed suicide, Bialosky contacted Dr. Edwin Shneidman to piece together a psychological autopsy.
In talking, he gave her a key piece of information—one thing everyone should know about suicide and its prevention:
“What should you do if you fear someone is suicidal?” I said.
“Dare to ask,” he said.
Contrary to long-perpetuated myth, asking a person if they’re considering suicide won’t plant the idea in their head. Chances are, if you’re bringing it up, they’ve thought about it already.
It’s just that simple. It’s a powerful question, but nothing to be afraid of. Keep it in the back of your mind. Use it if you need to. That one question could save the life of someone you love.
Reblog/tweet/share, please.
Hello, everybody!
I apologize for the long silence. Summer’s here, and it’s business as usual behind the scenes at LTT headquarters.
T-shirts are out in the world! I’ve had reports back from cities as close as Philadelphia and as far as Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. It’s amazing to see all these smiling faces in support of such an important cause as suicide prevention.
Check out nurse Michelle lookin’ sassy in her shirt:
We’re still working hard toward our Kickstarter launch. We’ve got some really amazing artists helping us out with backer rewards, too.
We’re also reaching out as much as possible to make people aware of the project and stir up some interest. That reminds me: if you’re reading this and LTT is a project you support, could you do me a favor?
Tweet a link to the project. Ask your followers to follow @lttphoto to keep up to date on our progress. Post about it on Facebook. Write about it on your blog and link back. If even one more person is aware of the project today than yesterday, I’ll consider it a success.
The headline:
Shock, Tragedy at Bend ‘Open Mic’ Night: Teen Keyboard Performer Stabs, Kills Self as Crowd Looks On
A brief synopsis: 19 year old Kipp Rusty Walker performs at an open mic night at Strictly Organic Coffee Company in Bend, OR and then stabs himself in the chest repeatedly in front of the audience. He dies.
A Google search of “Kipp Rusty Walker” relays plenty of hits, most of which are some mish-mash of an article posted by local Bend station KTVZ. Interestingly, while KTVZ does actually address what you should do when a friend threatens suicide (the correct answer here is TAKE IT SERIOUSLY), most of the other posts are more concerned with what Walker called the song he played before he killed himself (something like “Sorry for the Mess”).
If you watch the video associated with the KTVZ article, you’ll notice that anchor Adam Aaro says something I find absolutely infuriating, and it is this: “We normally don’t report on suicides.”
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on this, but most of them are ethical and stray from the most important question, which is: Why does it take the inherent sensationalism of a public suicide for a media outlet to decide to cover the topic at all?
It is a fact that suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States.
If the media chooses to sweep it under the rug, how is the public at large supposed to know that it is an omnipresent social issue which knows no age, creed, or ethnicity? I understand that we’re all supposed to be responsible citizens of the world, but that’s mostly unrealistic given the constant influx of content and the warp speed at which we live our lives. The fact remains that many of us rely on the media to supply us with information about the world, and that includes telling us what’s going on and what we should be paying attention to.
If the media chooses not to report on suicide, the knowledge is not made available to the public that saving a life could be as simple as asking someone if they’re having thoughts of hurting themselves. If the media chooses not to report on suicide, all the crap mythology gets perpetuated. I know that people will still die by their own hand, but isn’t saving just a couple lives a start?
Sure, it’s depressing, but I’d rather hear about suicide over Charlie Sheen any day. If we’re talking about it, there’s a better chance we’re doing something about it.
A quick note for those of you who purchased a LTT t-shirt: The order has been placed and you should have your shirt within approximately two to three weeks.
We ordered some extras, but they’re going fast. We are now completely sold out of medium t-shirts. As I mentioned before, it may be awhile before we order more, so if we still have your size, make sure to head over to http://ltt.bigcartel.com/ and grab one. Here’s what we have left:
S - 2
L - 2
XL - 2
XX - 1
Thank you so much for your support. I can’t even express how much I appreciate it.
Hello! I apologize for the long silence. We’ve been working hard behind the scenes and haven’t had much time to write.
Your two big updates for today are:
We’re a week and a half into the launch, and things are rolling along. There have been some bumps so far, but these things are to be expected. I’ve also gotten some extremely touching messages in my inbox. The project is already affecting people in ways I never could have imagined. I’m dumbfounded, and happy for it.
A huge update worth noting is that last week, thanks to a loan from a generous, kind, anonymous soul, I purchased a new camera body which will allow me to realize the multimedia-ness of Live Through This. The Canon 5D Mark II is capable of capturing still imagery as well as HD video, and is what I will be using to shoot the video for the upcoming Kickstarter project and participant interviews/portraits. I’m still testing it out and getting comfortable with it, but I intend to start shooting the video soon.
By the way, official LTT logo t-shirts are still going for pre-sale prices. Get ‘em while they’re hot!
…And we’re officially launched!
I’m really excited that Live Through This is becoming a reality. I’d been carrying this seedling around with me for years, this idea that maybe I could take my life experience and merge it with all the training I’ve had, both academically and artistically, to mold it into something bigger than me—something useful, something that could save lives.
I finally decided to plant that seed last August. Since then, it’s grown and changed so much that what you see now is barely recognizable from what I started with. In the coming weeks, we’re going to start taking our next steps: we’ll be casting out lines for participants and we’ll be working toward launching the Kickstarter project.
Kickstarter is an amazingly innovative way for artists to find help in getting their messages out into the world. I’m going to need quite a bit of funding to take this from being a vision in my head to being a tangible exhibition piece, and I think Kickstarter is the perfect platform. There are bits of gear I need to purchase to bring the project to fruition, but more importantly, I’ll need to make cross-country pilgrimages to interview the people who will become the faces of Live Through This.
I am 100% willing to contribute every extra bit of my own personal funds available after living expenses; however, it is impossible for me to do this on my own. The scope is too broad and the need is too great. This is where you come in. Because I know that funds are tight for everyone these days, we’re doing our work to lock in some fantastic backer rewards, so even if it’s a tough call between donating to LTT and investing that cash elsewhere, you should come out of the experience with something pretty cool to show for it. Something in addition to my undying gratitude, anyway. More on this soon.
I want to thank everyone reading this for taking the time and for caring about the cause, and I want to thank Lisa Lombardo for her faith in me and this idea. She’s been a key player in bringing LTT into the world, and I’d probably still be floundering without her.
Welcome to the new and improved home of Live Through This. Any and all project updates and other relevant information will be posted here over time. We’re still working on getting everything up and running, so bear with us, but bookmark this url, too!
In the meantime, check out our Live Through This T-shirts! All proceeds will go to getting this project off the ground. They’re going for a special pre-sale price of $19.99 plus shipping at the moment. Get ‘em while they’re hot!
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Logo art by Vinny Romanelli & Megan Gersch
