Shot in the head in Jan, US lawmaker smiles in Facebook photos

Phoenix: Photographs of Representative Gabrielle Giffords were posted on her Facebook page Sunday, the first clear public images of her since she began rehabilitation from a bullet wound to the brain in January.

A spokesman said Ms. Giffords and her husband, the astronaut Mark E. Kelly, released the photographs in an effort to prevent her from being hounded by photographers when she leaves inpatient rehabilitation this month.

"We've heard there is a bounty for photographs of her," said C. J. Karamargin, the spokesman for Ms. Giffords. "To avoid a paparazzi situation, they wanted to get these photos out."

The photos were taken on May 17 by P. K. Weis, a professional photographer and longtime friend of the congresswoman. Mr. Weis, the former photo editor of The Tucson Citizen newspaper, was chosen because Ms. Giffords is most comfortable around people she knows, her aides said.

The photos show Ms. Giffords in the courtyard of TIRR Memorial Hermann, the Houston rehabilitation hospital where she has been receiving treatment. Her mother is at her side in one photograph. In another photo, at right, she is smiling broadly, her hair far shorter than before and her face showing some minor aftereffects of the shooting.

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Ms. Giffords's staff has tightly controlled access to her and her doctors in the months since her injury. Early on, her staff released photos that showed her hand clutching her husband's and her hospital bed positioned on a balcony overlooking the mountains. But before the release of the latest photos, which were published in two Arizona newspapers on Sunday, the only other image of Ms. Giffords was grainy television footage showing her slowly climbing the stairs of a plane as she headed to Florida to watch her husband take off aboard the shuttle Endeavour.

The photos posted on Sunday were taken after her second trip to Florida because the initial launch was delayed. Soon afterward, she underwent surgery to reattach her cranium.

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"You see a resilient, upbeat and very positive woman," Mr. Karamargin said. "What is very amazing to me and my colleagues is unless you knew what happened on Jan. 8, it's impossible to tell she is a woman who suffered a point-blank bullet wound to the brain less than six months ago."

Ms. Giffords's chief of staff, Pia Carusone, offered a less upbeat assessment in an interview with The Arizona Republic last week, saying the congresswoman frequently speaks in brief one- or two-word sentences and uses gestures and facial expressions to make herself understood.

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"Add it all together and she's able to express the basics of what she wants or needs," she said. "But when it comes to a bigger and more complex thought that requires words, that's where she's had the trouble."