/sue, your bedroom - this way/
A piece of white paper stuck to a formica wall. A none too pretty photo, sort of greyish, sad, depressing, full of ambiguity. Why is this note for Sue here? Who is Sue? Where is Sue? Not even she herself knows. She is lost, wandering in a space without memory. The white navigating notice is there for a girl who remembers almost nothing, not even this simple thing that one takes for granted, something which to our able and versatile brains is a meaningless, peripheral piece of information. (Sign for Sue, 04/1998). Sue has sustained a brain injury, and suffers from the absence of short-term memory. The author of this photograph has gone through an experience similar to Sue's.At the time the photograph was taken, John Trotter, photographer for the Sacramento Bee newspaper, was already a patient for a year at a brain injury rehabilitation clinic in Placer County, California. He was recovering from a brutal assault on his person. A gang of young aggressors attacked him on March 24th, 1997 just outside his Sacramento home. The main instigator of the assault was the then- twenty-seven year old leader of a youth streeth gang, who probably took objection to John Trotter's behavior - he was taking photographs of a street scene. Eyewitnesses cited that the aggressor knocked Trotter to the ground and then the whole gang nearly beat him to death, kicking him in various parts of the body and head. The damage was devastating. John Trotter suffered multiple head and brain injuries, and spent many months in a grave condition in a rehabilitation clinic.(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)