OUR LENS | Exceptional work by the St. Petersburg Times staff
Girl in the window
19
August
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About this gallery
For the first seven years of her life, Dani never saw the sun, felt the wind or tasted solid food. She was kept in a closet in a Plant City house, cloistered in darkness, left in a dirty diaper, fed only with a bottle. "She was a feral child," said Carolyn Eastman of the Tampa Heart Gallery. "We'd never seen a case like that." She was adopted by Bernie and Diane Lierow, a family from Fort Myers, Fla., who have since moved to a 26-acre farm outside of Lebanon, Tenn. The St. Petersburg Times first published Dani's story, "The Girl in the Window," in August 2008. Now, three years later, we're revisiting the Lierows to find out what's changed, and perhaps, more importantly, what hasn't.
While editing her photos each night in a Tennessee hotel room during a visit in August 2011, Times' photojournalist Melissa Lyttle felt like she had seen some of these scenes before. After revisiting her photos of Dani and the Lierows from 2008, these dipytch photo pairings emerged, offering us a unique look at then and now.
After looking at these diptychs, see more recent photos of Dani in Tennessee. Read the story: Three years later, "The Girl in the Window" learns to connect.
