Content Marketing

Awareness, innovation shape future for those living with rare disease, ASMD

Oct. 2021

Client: Associated Press Content Services, the paid content service of The Associated Press, for Sanofi

When April talks about going on dates with her husband, Chris, or watching fireflies with their 6-year-old son, Nicholas, she radiates in such a way that all but betrays the battle happening inside her body.  

But as the Texas mom balances family life, she also manages a rare, progressive and potentially life-threatening genetic disease known to cause health consequences — including an enlarged spleen or liver, difficulty breathing, lung infections and unusual bruising or bleeding, among a multitude of other disease manifestations. 

Historically known as Niemann-Pick disease A and B, acid sphingomyelinase deficiency (ASMD for short) affects only 1 in 250,000 individuals. And because it is so rare, ASMD can be difficult to diagnose and has no available treatments. Though with scientific innovation and greater awareness, a path to a quicker diagnosis may be possible. 

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Armed with treatment, Navy vet gets ammo for confronting mesothelioma

Sept. 2020

Client: Associated Press Content Services, the paid content service of The Associated Press, for Novocure.

When Terry O’Keefe enlisted to the U.S. Navy in 1970, he felt his assignment might be a relatively safer post than fighting on the ground during the Vietnam War.

But what he didn’t realize was that his close contact with asbestos, especially from inside the ship’s boiler room where he worked, presented its own dangers.

“It was everywhere. Everything had asbestos on it, in it, around it,” Terry recalled from his home in Pennsylvania. “The dust in the boiler room was like snow – we’d make snowballs and throw it at each other. We were a bunch of dumb kids; we didn’t know.”

Now widely recognized as the primary risk factor for a rare cancer called mesothelioma, asbestos exposure accounts for approximately 70% of all cases. Complicating its detection, its symptoms often don’t show up until many years – even decades – after exposure.

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Devastated but not defeated: Georgia couple refuses to let husband’s brain cancer sideline life’s adventures

July 2020

Client: Associated Press Content Services, the paid content service of The Associated Press, for Novocure.

As teenagers growing up in Georgia, Travis and Mikayla Greene attended the same high school, never dating each other. But that didn’t stop their friends from saying how perfect they would be together, often joking that the two of them would get married someday.

The pair laughed it off, until the first Thanksgiving after graduation where, together again in their hometown, a conversation at a grocery store kicked off a romantic chain of events. They made plans to get married in the Spring of 2017.

But that following January something unusual happened. Travis was working as a crane operator, when one day he began losing vision in his left eye. “It was kind of like looking through a straw,” he said. Mikayla accompanied him to the doctor, who ordered a CT scan right away and, upon seeing the results, sent them straight to the ER. A biopsy showed tumors on Travis’s brain.

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Outsider In: At 75, Patricia Field is Still 100% Original

Feb. 2016

Client: Getty Images. Originally published on the company’s online magazine, Stories & Trends

Patricia Field’s life is undergoing major change. She, however, is not.

Sitting on a sparkling turquoise cube in a dressing room at her iconic New York shop – which she is closing after 50 years in business — the crimson-haired style curator and “Sex and the City” costumer held court one January morning. A team from Getty Images prepared the space for a portrait shoot, but they couldn’t help but be drawn to her presence while they worked.

Was it because outsiders and rebels are having a pop cultural moment? Perhaps. More likely though, it was that they found Field’s call-it-as-she-sees-it confidence beguiling as ever. Just shy of 75, her frankness — and by default, her magnetism — only have improved with age.

“Some say I’m brutally honest,” she said. “I hate that phrase. I never understood how you can hook up brutality and honesty. Honesty is not brutal. Dishonesty is brutal.”

Field was gregarious in her interactions with the crew, but she looked fierce. Wearing an inky scarf, sleek black jumpsuit and black leather sleeves that exposed her bare olive shoulders, Field mused about politics, corporations and of course, fashion.

“I’m often asked about trends,” she said. “I will not engage. I’m not going to talk to you about flare bottoms or skinny legs. ... I don’t want to be in that environment of brainwash.”

It’s an environment she has shunned for years.

A destination for rock stars, club kids, artists and other nonconformists, her eponymous store evolved over time to stand for much more than commerce. It represented the exact opposite of an “environment of brainwash,” where people could purchase the kinds of items that would bring their fantasy vision of themselves into real-life focus: multicolored wigs, vintage sweaters, leather harnesses, extreme platform heels, not to mention accessories galore – including the iconic name plate necklaces made famous by Sarah Jessica Parker’s “Sex and the City” character Carrie.

More recently, the shop featured wearable works from such artists as Scooter LaForge and Augusto Manzanares, including one-of-a- kind hand-painted jackets and crystal covered eye masks, respectively.

But most of all, and possibly the most powerful antidote to brainwash, her store provided a connection to real people, in real time.

“It’s real. It’s the street,” she said. “It’s why I love my world of the store. I call it, ‘truth in retail.’

“I’m a big advocate of the truth,” she said. “Me and Socrates.”

And Beyoncé. And Missy Elliott, Miley Cyrus, Debbie Harry and Paris Hilton, who, Fields said, all became both clients and friends over her years in business.

“I’m naming them not because they’re famous, but because I respect them and I care for them,” she said. “It’s personal. Something strikes the chord of respect with me. It’s not fashion, it’s the person. It’s realness. It’s not hype.”

How Miroslav Georgijevic Got to the Top of the Mast — in Work and in Life

Sept. 2015

Client: iStock/Getty Images. Originally published on the company’s online magazine, Stories & Trends

Miroslav Georgijevic has taken some chances in life. In addition to the mast — the story of a magnificent day on the Adriatic Sea he recounted recently from his home in Serbia — the iStock photographer’s career was also built on a fair amount of risk taking.

It all started in 2006 when he borrowed a camera from a friend and got hooked taking pictures.

“I was immediately in love,” Georgijevic said. “I started taking pictures every day. My friend gave the camera to me for one week, but I didn’t give it back to him for three weeks! I was shooting, shooting, shooting. So I decided to buy a camera.”

There was only one problem. Georgijevic was 21 years old back then, living with his parents during difficult economic times. Telling them he wanted to buy a camera did not go over well.

“They said, ‘What? You want to buy a camera for $500 bucks!?’” Georgijevic said. “They told me I was crazy.”

So he decided to get a job selling computer parts simply so he could afford a camera. And he made a deal with his new boss: “Buy me a camera and you can give me less money for the next six months,” Georgijevic said.

“So I bought my first camera and I started shooting everything,” he said. “And then, I heard about stock photography.”

Georgijevic tried to apply with iStock by Getty Images, but because his camera wasn’t of high enough quality (too “noisy” in photography-speak) his photos did not have the proper resolution, and his application was denied.

Still, he did not give up.

About six months later, Georgijevic sold his camera and bought a more professional model.

“And then everything started happening,” he said. Around December 2009, he decided to go exclusive with iStock by Getty Images and start making pictures as a side business.

That is, until one day, when he attended a presentation by the prolific commercial photographer Chase Jarvis.

“He told the audience that if you want to be a professional photographer, you must be 100 percent a photographer,” Georgijevic said. The next morning, Georgijevic quit his job.

“I was a manager by that time,” he said. “But I just quit my job and decided to be 100 percent a photographer.”

Again, the decision caused some friction at home.

“My wife was a little scared,” he said. “We were in a bad shape financially, with a bunch of bills all over the desk — and I told her, ‘Listen, one day we will make some real money from this.’ And she said, ‘Please, just go to the other room.’”

But she was ultimately supportive, and after a year, Georgijevic achieved this dream.

“It’s funny!” he said. “So now, everything is cool, we go travelling, we make photos” – like the time he saw that mast in the Adriatic Sea.

Georgijevic remembers being on vacation with his wife and some friends, when he noticed the radar on the top of the mast.

“So I asked our skipper, ‘How do you fix that when it’s broken?’” Georgijevic said. “And he told me, ‘We have a system with a rope, and we have a few guys who pull the ropes.’ And I said, ‘Perfect! I want to go up.’ And he said it was dangerous. So I begged him for a few hours, and finally, he agreed.”

Georgijevic said all he could think up there was how amazing it was.

“So I started making shots,” he said. “And I asked my friends and the crew to go into the water, to swim, to do this and that. And we made a few great pictures and videos. I was so excited with those pictures. Because it was a really unique and amazing day.”

It’s this spirit that carries Georgijevic through work and through life:

“I always think that when you think positive, when you do what you love, at some point your dream will come true.”

In Africa, photographing the fusion of modernity and tradition

Oct. 2015

Client: Getty Images. Originally published on the company’s online magazine, Stories & Trends

Two years ago, Getty Images Prestige photographer Harry Hook slipped into South Sudan during a window of peace for the war-torn African nation.

Hook, who is well known for his 1990 dystopian film Lord of the Flies and his 2014 BAFTA-nominated documentary Photographing Africa, brought with him a big box of a camera (a Pentax 645), and his medium of choice, film. His goal: to photograph the Mundari cattle camps, in which young men and women head away from their villages to the bands of the Nile for 3 months each year, to gather together and graze their cattle. 

But since he only had 15 frames per role and just a limited supply of film, he needed to be extremely decisive in choosing the right moments to capture.

“I spend a lot of time waiting for the right moment,” Hook said by phone recently from his home in Bristol. “And I react as instinctively as I can when the moment occurs.”

The cattle camps were hot, remote and difficult for outsiders to access, but that only encouraged him.

“I understand the privilege of bringing a camera into a place that has endured a 30-year civil war,” he said. He was grateful to experience a place so rarely photographed, and he enjoyed the combination of the landscape’s beautiful light together with the warmth of the Mundari people.

“It was a festive feeling,” Hook said. “The energy there is kind of like a music festival. At dusk, they light these smoky ash fires to keep the insects away, which makes the camps very atmospheric places. And, generally, around sunset everyone is singing and dancing.”

That’s when he noticed the young woman standing in the haze, and he pressed down on his shutter to make the image.

“As you can see, she is wearing an interesting mélange, a funky modern little top, which is the style, and traditional clothing,” Hook said. “So even though we’re in this incredibly remote area, she’s not untouched by the modern world.”

This dynamic is at the center of much of Hook’s work.

“I’m really interested in this fusion and the friction between modernity and traditional ways of life,” he said. “I take pictures of the people I’m interested in and the things I’m interested in. How Africa’s changing, that’s what interests me.”