HOSPITAL

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I started working on the “Hospital” theme almost twenty years ago. But presently I am taking a moment to pause; as I collect these years’ material I contemplate upon it with critical thinking.

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Looking back in time and through the portraits of the people photographed, the empty cold places and the lifeless objects, I recognize my dual existence and my personal journey in photography and medicine.

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I realized that the long working hours, the night shifts, the “enclosed” in-hospital holidays constitute a parallel universe. Thereafter, the rest in the on-call rooms became a conscious time break of internal contemplation. All these years, the bag of my personal belongings managed to fit a camera and my photographic ghosts. In the light of modern times, the grand masters of photography together with creators of “allied” arts enhanced my efforts to produce personal photographic work within the time-space of my work environment.

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The strictly entrenched boundaries of the asphyxiating hospital structures possibly resulted in taming my forms. The search of subject in my immediate surroundings led to my mapping of the hospital landscape, including in it the human presence, or, contrarily, indicating its “absence”. The working people who experience these spaces were always cordially invited to stand before the camera. They indissolubly gaze directly at the lens bearing their professional “garments” or, temporarily, stripped off them. My mental approach, that of the serial depiction of the hospital anthropogeography, led to my exclusively using the existing interior lighting of the hospital buildings. I feel that by doing so, the plasticity of the body structures is emphasized and the rigidity of the gaze of the depicted figures embodied in the atmosphere of their “natural” surroundings is imposed.