Photographer filmed the life and death of a mother who never kissed him

The mother of photographer James Friedman, like most mothers, was a mystery to her son. She was wonderful and complicated at the same time. She supported his passion for photography and became one of the first subjects of photography when Friedman was only nine years old. But she had a complicated relationship with her own mother, and she was neither expansive nor overly loving. Friedman does not remember that she ever kissed him as a child.

Dorothy Gilbert Friedman has been smoking for 47 years, starting when she was 11 and continuing all her life. A lot of her photos taken by her son were included in the project called "1,029,398 Cigarettes" — according to the approximate number of cigarettes she smoked until she got to the hospital and died of emphysema.

Dorothy Friedman is not one of those who sits quietly waiting for the camera shutter to work. As her son says, she was shy of the lens. Nevertheless, she agreed to help him. Over time, she began to feel more comfortable in the frame, and James learned more about the woman who raised him.

When Dorothy was ill, her son visited her. In the last eight months of her life, he came to her mother every day, either to the nursing home or to the hospital. As always, she let him take her picture.

Friedman will never know why she agreed, but it seems to him that his mother did it for him, not for herself. Despite her willingness to participate in the photo project, Dorothy never asked her son to show her the pictures.

But these photos, whether he wanted it or not, became a gift from a photographer to a dying mother. At the end of each of his visits to the hospital, for the first time in all the time spent together, James Friedman and Dorothy Gilbert Friedman kissed each other goodbye. He took one of those kisses and saved the photo. A few hours after this picture was taken, Dorothy was gone.