Kryslyn Stanley had to take the call. It was Aug. 4, 2022, and the sun had already set for the evening. The mother of two needed to speak with a detective from the San Antonio Police Department. A few days prior, her partner (and the father of her 4-year-old daughter, Nyx) had given her a black eye. That, compounded with the emotional abuse she endured, pushed Stanley to leave the relationship and file a police report.
To speak with the detective on the phone, Stanley stepped out of the Motel 6 room she and her two daughters, Nyx and 9-year-old Sylyn, were staying in. That day it was just Stanley and her Nyx. Stanley had her eldest daughter stay with her father for an extra week in hopes that she would not see the black eye.
“There wasn’t anywhere where she could go where Nyx couldn’t listen in,” said Jessica Phelps, a photojournalist with the San Antonio Express-News who was visiting Stanley and her daughter that day. “And she really didn’t want Nyx to hear all the details of what had happened. She was trying to protect her from that.”
As Stanley spoke to the detective, the photojournalist stayed inside the motel room with Nyx.
“Nyx was just busy watching cartoons and jumping on the bed and being 4,” Phelps said. “After a few minutes, she started poking her head out towards where her mom was.”
Phelps managed to bring Nyx’s focus back to her cartoons. The photojournalist knew what an emotional call this would be for Stanley, whose life Phelps began documenting after Stanley left the abusive relationship with Nyx’s father. Phelps had first met Stanley during an assignment about the tenants of Seven Oaks Apartments, who had lived in deplorable conditions. Many of the apartment complex residents — Stanley among them — did not have working air-conditioning during an unforgivingly hot summer. This motel room was paid for by the city.
At one point, Phelps stepped out of the room to take a photo of Stanley on her call.
“I took a few and, after I’d been out there for a couple of minutes, sure enough, Nyx poked her head back out again and was kind of staring off into space … not even looking at me,” Phelps said. “Usually she’s just like, ‘Take my picture.’ Smile, smile, smile at me all the time.”
But this time was different. Phelps said she could tell Nyx was intently listening to what her mom was saying.
“And I don’t know that Kryslyn was even aware that her daughter was at the door listening, because she was so involved in this emotional phone call,” she said. “I don’t even know if Kryslyn realized that I had stepped out at that point. She was so caught in that moment.”
Within a few minutes, the 4-year-old was back inside the room.
One of those photos stayed with Phelps. It shows a barefoot Stanley seated on the concrete hallway floor just outside the motel room, cellphone in her left hand, cigarette in her right. She appears to be deep in a conversation. The bruising under her left eye is black. A foot or two away is Nyx’s frame in the doorway. The little girl stares ahead.
“I knew when I took it that it was powerful because it was affecting me in that moment,” Phelps said. “It was hard to be in that moment, taking that picture, because I could see both mom and daughter were just kind of caught up in this moment.”
In her mind, Phelps connected Stanley’s words on the call to the look on Nyx’s face.
“I knew it was a really powerful moment, and I was just hoping that I captured it well to be able to relate that to viewers — what that was like for both Kryslyn and Nyx,” she said. “And when I got home and went through my take, I was pretty sure I’d captured it. It … just took me right back to that moment. I still have a hard time looking at a lot of these photos.”
That photo — along with others that make up more of Phelp’s work for the Express-News — led to her being named the 2023 Photojournalist of the Year, Small Market, by the National Press Photographers Association. Before Phelps moved to San Antonio two years ago, she produced award-winning work at the Newark Advocate in Newark, Ohio. Phelps recalled her first year in San Antonio as one spent getting to know sources, figuring out a new city and learning how to tell stories there. “So to be able to have won in my second year, it’s just crazy,” she said. “Like, I can’t believe it.”
As Phelps helped cover the story of the Seven Oaks tenants’ complaints about the conditions at the apartment complex, the photojournalist said she found herself getting closer to Stanley. After the black eye, Stanley decided to leave. When Phelps went to see her again, she saw how the now-single mother was struggling. There was a moment when Nyx was having a meltdown while Stanley was trying to get ready. Phelps asked Stanley, “Are you OK if I document your story?”
Phelps said Stanley thought about it for a minute.
“You could see all the gears working,” the photojournalist recalled of that moment.
Stanley agreed to allow Phelps to follow her. As of this week, the photojournalist is still documenting Stanley’s recovery from domestic abuse and her fight to get back on her feet for herself and her daughters.
Phelps said when news outlets cover domestic violence, it’s usually so far after the fact — after someone has already been killed by a partner. You’re photographing somebody not there, she explained, or it’s a year or two later — or a decade later and the person is talking about the violence. Those photographs are more portrait-based, she said.
“And because this was so raw, and it was right when it had happened, I knew it was a really good opportunity to show people the messiness of domestic violence and what it looks like: the physical scars of it, but also the emotional ones,” Phelps said. “Because both Nyx and Kryslyn are so emotive with their faces, I knew that it would not be easy to photograph, but the photographs would be very telling because of that.”
Phelps said she is glad the photo has had an effect on others and that it fosters more understanding and empathy. Domestic violence, she said, is not over once you leave a partner.
“There’s so many emotional scars that you have to get through. You have to pick yourself up and take care of your children every day, and that doesn’t always leave time to take care of yourself,” she said. “I’ve watched Kryslyn kind of spiral from all of this because she was so focused on her girls, that she couldn’t take care of herself. … It’s so frustrating to see so many people get away with this.”
When Phelps spoke with Poynter last week, she said her team was looking for a reporter to write an article to accompany her growing collection of photos. On Tuesday, she found out she’d be the one to tell the story.
