Rebecca Norris Webb: Night Calls

Book excerpt: Rebecca Norris Webb's meditation on fathers and daughters, one's first landscape, caretaking of the land and its inhabitants, and on history that divides us as much as heals us Rebecca Norris Webb (born 1956) first came across W. Eugene Smith's "Country Doctor," his famous Life magazine photo essay, while studying at the International Center of Photography in New York. She was immediately drawn to the subject of Smith's essay, Dr Ernest Ceriani, a Colorado country doctor who was just a few years older than her father. She wondered: How would a woman tell this story, especially if she happened to be the doctor's daughter? In light of this, for the past six years Norris Webb has retraced the route of her 99-year-old father's house calls through Rush County, Indiana, the rural county where they both were born. Following his work rhythms, she photographed often at night and in the early morning, when many people arrive into the world--her father delivered some one thousand babies--and when many people leave it. Accompanying the photographs, lyrical text pieces addressed to her father create a series of handwritten letters told at a slant.