Shamus Ian Fatzinger’s multimedia documentary about the Ninmag family of Herndon, Virginia, could hardly be more tragic. Mark Ninmag, an electrician by trade, was unable to find work after the housing bubble burst. His wife Ratana took on a second job to try to keep up with their mortgage payments, but then died of cancer, leaving Mark and their two children on an emotional and financial precipice.

The project originally appeared in the weekly Fairfax County Times last December as a story about a family caught up in the housing crisis. At the end of January, Fatzinger and writer Hannah Hager did a follow-up story about Ratana’s sudden decline and death on the day the family was to be evicted from their house. In early February, Fatzinger combined both stories as a heartbreaking 4 1/2 minute audio slideshow for Fairfaxtimes.com.

“I told the editor I was [recording audio], but I wasn’t promising a multimedia story because I wasn’t sure I could pull it off,” says Fatzinger. “But this is the kind of thing I wanted to do, so I was going to give it a try.”

It was a local realtor who first suggested the story to Hager. The realtor was trying to help the family avoid foreclosure, and thought the publicity might attract contributions for the family and lead to a job for Ninmag. As it turns out, Hager had been looking for a story about a family facing foreclosure.

“It was such a timely story given the economic turmoil going on throughout the country. We took it and went with it,” she says.

Ironically, cutbacks at the paper made it possible for Fatzinger to pursue the story in depth. The Fairfax County Times was consolidated about two years ago from a chain of seven community weeklies. Fatzinger and the staff of 13 photographers he used to supervise covered parades, festivals, ground-breaking ceremonies and other hyper-local fare.

Now that the papers have been combined, stories have to appeal to a wider readership, and the four remaining photographers are no longer under pressure to cover as many local events. “With the volume down, I can concentrate on stories like this one,” says Fatzinger.

He saw the potential for a good multimedia story as soon as Hager told him about the Ninmag family. Fatzinger had been honing his multimedia skills by attending NPPA short courses, turning some of his work-a-day community stories into slideshows, and asking more experienced practitioners—including Seth Gitner, former multimedia guru of the Roanoke Times—for pointers and feedback.

Fatzinger spent a total of four days with the family over the course of the project. Initially, he photographed Mark and Ratana talking about their financial troubles, as well as her illness. He set up the story visually with a few images shot outside the Ninmag’s house that show the apparent ordinariness of their middle-class lives. He also photographed Mark wiring some basement lights, an odd job he got from a member of their church.

The story of the family’s travails is told partly through images of the details, such as a close-up of a foreclosure notice, and an image of Ratana’s numerous medicine bottles. Fatzinger also recorded interviews with the Ninmags.

“I had the luxury of [recording] the story twice,” he says, explaining that he didn’t manage to ask all the right questions or get good audio quality the first time. So he also recorded Hager’s interviews. She asked difficult questions about the family’s finances and Ratana’s terminal illness. The result was an intimate and powerful audio narrative to go with the images. “I kept telling Hannah that I couldn’t have done it without her,” Fatzinger says.

Hager credits Fatzinger for the rapport he had with Ninmag that helped gain the access they needed. “He had a different relationship with the father than I did,” she says. “They had a level of comfort and understanding.”

Fatzinger’s toughest challenge was photographing Ratana’s death. Her condition seemed stable when the story about the foreclosure appeared in print in December. A few weeks later when Fatzinger called to check in, he was shocked to learn that Ratana was on her death bed.
“When I pulled up in front of the house, I remember sitting in my truck with a sick feeling in my stomach, thinking, ‘I’ve got to walk in with a camera. This is hard.’”

Inside, he found Ratana surrounded by family and hospice workers. He spent the rest of the day hanging around the house with everyone else. “I wasn’t thinking about how to tell the story, I was just being there, experiencing it, capturing little moments as they happened.”
As Ratana died, her husband and children were clustered around her. Fatzinger was just outside the room, in a bad position to make any photos. “I didn’t want to run up to the front of the room and seem like a morbid jerk,” he says. But then Kathleen, Mark and Ratana’s 14-year-old daughter, left the room.

Fatzinger says, “I got a hold of myself and said, ‘You’ve got to move now or you’re not going to have anything.’” He went to the front of the room and made a portrait of Mark and 7-year-old Edward crying over Ratana. Then he photographed Kathleen, who had returned with her violin to play music for her mother.

“I told Mark throughout the project that I didn’t want to be annoying, and that if he ever wanted me to leave or put down my camera, to just give me a look and I’ll know,” Fatzinger says.

But Mark Ninmag embraced the journalists, particularly after their first story brought a flood of cards and letters from well-wishers. Ninmag asked Fatzinger to photograph Ratana’s funeral and cremation. A week later, Fatzinger returned once more to photograph Mark and his two children adjusting to life without Ratana.

The print and multimedia versions of the story ended up attracting more than $14,000 in donations for the Ninmag family. In May, Fatzinger told PDN that Ninmag has found work through members of his church, and is trying to negotiate with his mortgage lender, Countrywide, for terms that would allow him to hang onto the family’s house.

Hager and Fatzinger are looking for their next project together. “We’re scheming ideas,” Hager says.

The Ninmags' story can be viewed at http://www.timespapers.com/slideshows/OneThingataTime/.