Ongoing: Maranie Staab's photo documentary
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Maranie Staab: Photo Documentary
Since her ALS diagnosis, Hanna has lived into an ethos of “stubborn joy” and a will to “live fully while dying.”
…We reminisced about that March moonrise and spoke of returning to her favorite spot. A long pause carried unspoken questions about time, energy, and health. We all sensed such adventures might belong to the past. Hanna cut through the silence with a promise: “You’ll find me there.”
How love in action provides an example of what is possible as we “walk each other home.”
“Imagine if tomorrow everyone on the margins woke with garlands of flowers and prayers and incense around them. Imagine their joy as they stepped or rolled or stumbled into a world so tightly woven together in reverence for life that they never feared slipping through the cracks ever again.”
Hanna du Plessis, in Bedsores and Bliss
For nearly two years Maranie Staab has continued to document moments of life for Hanna and the Careforce community—an ongoing visual witness to what it looks like to live fully while dying.
The images show what most people never see: morning routines with caregivers, celebrations of small victories, bodies holding bodies, community showing up day after day. Hanna laughing. Hanna exhausted. Hanna with ventilator, communication device, the people who lift and turn and feed and love her. The photographs refuse to look away.
This isn’t tragedy documentation. It’s life documentation—not sanitized, not romanticized, but real. The images hold both the devastation and the stubborn joy. Maranie’s lens shows “love in action” meeting the daunting tasks inherent in dying, wrapping Hanna in what she calls “an expansive, loving embrace.”
The ongoing series provides what Maranie describes as “an example of what is possible as we ‘walk each other home.'” It’s a chronicle of chosen family stepping in where systems fail, of community as antidote to hiding disability and death.
Magazine Feature: Capturing Stubborn Joy
MAGAZINE FEATURE
Capturing Stubborn Joy
Capturing Stubborn Joy
YNST Magazine | November 2025
Written by Gillian Cappadona
Photography by Maranie Rae Staab
How Artist Hanna du Plessis Celebrates Life While Dying
YNST Magazine dedicated a feature spread to Hanna’s story—not as tragedy but as testament. “Capturing Stubborn” documents how an artist continues creating, a writer continues writing, a teacher continues teaching even as ALS takes mobility, voice, independence.
The article, written by Gillian Cappadona and featuring photography by Maranie Staab, explores what it means to celebrate life while dying. The images show care in action: hands holding, bodies supporting, community showing up. Hanna in costume for a parade. Hanna laughing. Hanna being held. The visual story refuses to sanitize or sentimentalize—it shows the whole truth.
Through an artful marriage of Maranie’s images with Hanna’s words, the article carries the theme of “stubborn joy:” this isn’t about dying. It’s about living fully in whatever time remains.
Photo Essay: Stubborn Joy
PHOTO INSTALLATION & ESSAY
Stubborn Joy: On Death and Dying
Stubborn Joy: On Death and Dying
Robert Smith Gallery | Social Documentary Network
Summer 2025
"We have such little practice in allowing the grief to undo us, in trusting that the undoing will re-weave us into something larger."
What does it look like to live fully while dying? Photographer Maranie Staab spent five months with Hanna and the Careforce community—the chosen family providing round-the-clock care—documenting what she calls “love in action.”
The work pairs Maranie’s images with Hanna’s own words about the experience of ALS. Not clinical observations but lived truth: being packaged like a surfboard at night with pillows, silicone stickers, sheepskin, ventilator mask. The magnetic pull toward being held. The longing to bury her nose in a rosebush one more time. The cat of loss purring on her lap as she watches the world continue without her.
Hanna writes:
“Part of dying is being vividly alive also. I feel stripped of my filters. Please just be in the moment with me. There is nothing to fix.”
The gallery asks the question that matters:
“Dear one, I’m so curious about what it is like for you. How are you living? What keeps you going? How might we support each other as we lose what’s precious?”
Maranie’s photographs show the answer—people showing up, bodies holding bodies, community as constellation. This coordinated selflessness born of genuine care provides “an example of what is possible as we ‘walk each other home.'”
The work has been exhibited both online through Social Documentary Network and as a physical installation at the Robert Smith Gallery in Pittsburgh (June 2025). Maranie continues documenting Hanna’s community on her Instagram feed.