Beverly Smith, 61, of Rochester N.Y., has adopted 14 foster children over the course of 30 years. Most of the children are older now and have left the house, but Beverly, being retired, has not given up her love for childcare and watches numerous of her grandchildren on a daily basis while their parents are at work. Today, she is currently raising two of her adopted children and three grandchildren.

Beverly and her late husband, James Smith, had one son in the early 80’s and then were told that they couldn’t have any more. Beverly, being raised as an only child, always wanted a larger family so that her kids would never feel lonely. “So I decided, me and my husband, that we would just go ahead and try that [foster care],” says Beverly. “ And we did it and we loved it. And we winded up adopting six siblings first. And it continued until we winded up adopting 14.” James fell ill around 2012 suffering from a heart attack and numerous strokes that gave him dementia. “Things started to go downhill for him,” says Beverly. “And then he went into the nursing home, Henrietta and Brighton, and we wanted to bring him home but it was just too much, and he winded up passing away.”

As much as Beverly loved fostering and adopting children, after her husband passed she decided it was time to stop adopting and to focus solely on raising the children that were still under her care. It was until her daughter, Yazmin Smith, 25, gave up her three kids, that Beverly was faced with yet another cycle of children to raise. “She’s out there in the streets like most of these young people,” says Beverly regarding Yazmin. “I'm 61 years old and now I'm raising babies, you know?” Beverly's oldest grandchild under her care, Leelani, 7, has had to undergo numerous brain and heart surgeries as a result of substance abuse while Yazmin was pregnant. This is a great hardship for Beverly as they are constantly in and out of the hospital. “But I always say to my daughter, Jamie, if something happens to me I want her to fight for them. Even though she’s got her own kids. Fight for them because they deserve better…They my heart, they my everything, those kids.”

Polaroid dye transfer is a hands-on process that involves lifting the emulsion from the polaroid and transferring it to another substrate. Utilizing this method, I wanted each image to exist on its own in order to highlight the different qualities of each of Beverly’s children, who have their own unique background and story prior to coming to Beverly’s. While highlighting the childrens’ differences, I also felt the polaroid transfer provided a unity to the piece, touching on the theme of family. I chose the accordion book layout so that the viewers could see all of the images together as one and also separately if they chose to.