Brandon Kruse

Vito Palmere in a nursing home near Philadelphia

Brandon Kruse was born 1985 and currently works as a staff photojournalist at the The Gainesville Sun in Gainesville, Florida. In 2007, he graduated with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Missouri School of Journalism. Previously, he lived in Sydney, Australia working as a media researcher for a quasi-autonomous NGO researching minority portrayals in Australian print media. His awards include the National Press Photographers Association, Pictures of the Year International, College Photographer of the Year, Society of Professional Journalists, and Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. As a native of rural Iowa, his interests lie in photographing the life’s of working-class agricultural and industrial America, and pursuing multimedia as a form of storytelling.

About the Photograph:

“This photograph was taken while I was working on a story with Rose and Vito Palmere in a nursing home just outside of Philadelphia. The story was going to be about living the last years together in a nursing home and adjusting to life in a home after the tragic loss of their son and caregiver. At any rate, the story fell through for one of thousands of reasons they do, but in the time I was with them, I photographed much of their daily routine. It just so happened that every Friday, Rose would go downstairs and play bingo, and Vito, not much of a socialite, would catch up on his sleep and listen to the Phillie’s play on the radio. It was during that time that this photograph was taken. The calendar on the wall, which was several months behind, was given to them by their son, before his death. A lot of my people think this is a portrait, and I guess you could call it that, but Vito tended to zone out quite a bit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even know I was in the room when this was taken.”