From the Publisher: Mar 19 1990

The extraordinary pictures illustrating this week's cover story are the work of a remarkable photographer, Ruven Afanador, 31. What Colombian-born Afanador describes as "luminously toned" portraits are not the usual stuff of our full-color magazine. "I had admired his portfolio and had been looking for several months for the right assignment for him," says MaryAnne Golon, TIME's assistant picture editor for special projects. "I knew immediately that this was the one. Because Ruven is as calm and tasteful as his pictures, he was able to work with the families of our subjects without being intrusive."

To meet his deadline, Afanador had to schedule eight photographic sessions from California to Maryland in seven days. Nonetheless, he arranged to talk quietly with the families of each subject, usually the night before he began photographing. "I wanted them to understand," says Afanador, "that I intended to portray a family and the love it felt, not a medical problem." Returning to New York City after several nights with very little sleep, he still was not finished. He headed straight to his darkroom, where he used old photographic paper and a special chemical process to provide the pictures' yellowish cast.

Afanador began his project believing that people who are comatose remained completely motionless. "But while I was doing the picture that is now on the cover," he says, "Christine Busalacchi opened her eyes and seemed to smile at me. It had a dramatic effect on me, but it didn't change my attitude about allowing these patients to die."

This week we begin a new column by Michael Kramer in the Nation section. Titled "The Political Interest," it will focus chiefly on domestic affairs in the U.S., while also following U.S. interests overseas. "A measure of America's continuing might is the fact that most domestic issues resonate abroad," says Kramer, who joined TIME in November 1988 as a special correspondent. "But any way you cut it, high policy has its roots in good old-fashioned hardball politics."