The first thing we notice is that our subject’s face is mostly obscured in shadow, one created by the late afternoon light shining horizontally into the second floor of the Berkeley Medical Center (BMC). Half of her forehead, the bridge of her nose, the length of her neck, are lit while the remainder is cloaked in darkness, one that blurs the edges of the image. What do these two kinds of light invite us to see? Gazing at this photo, the focus could have been her face mask, that now ubiquitous “PPE”, but we only see it after her chin, nose, and face strike each strike a note and, together, create an arpeggio of light and shadow. A bright orange-ish stethoscope is slung around her neck and its shiny plastic pops against matte navy-blue scrubs. A charm—pedant? —hangs at the end of a gossamer chain, one that teases a secret significance. What does this jewelry—talisman?—hold for her?
Portrait photographer Molly Humphreys, part of the Healthcare is Human creative partners, reminds us that the perfunctory glance we offer most people is not at all the same thing as seeing them. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, we might have hurried past, but Humphreys sustained her gaze, looking deeply in a deliberate—almost—meditative practice. When we return to this photograph, regarding it as a piece of art, we tap into the skills of artists like Humphreys, and, when we do so, strengthen the muscles of our visual literacy. Health humanities and art history scholar Siobhan M. Conaty writes about these skills, describing them “a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media.”
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When Humphreys snaps this photo in a beige, dimly lit hallway, by harnessing the light that filters in through a window to illuminate this nurse, she is inviting us to stand with her in a specific context. In autumn 2020, this was a period of “peak fatigue,” a time when questions were being asked about our social contract. Was it being burned on a bonfire? “Healthcare heroes” had been replaced in the public discourse by hostility and the BMC was eerily quiet; a no-visitor policy was in force. Covid was a harsh reality by then, any of our remaining silly spring notions of “a short disruption” had long since been thrown at, on, or in a dumpster like so many discarded Amazon boxes. The deadly “delta winter” was about to be delivered to our doorsteps.
As we train our attentive capacities to the photo, we internally begin to describe what we see. Maybe it’s the delicate black eyelashes expertly caught in focus, ones that curl just so, atop hazel-green eyes. Do they carry a mix of resolve, worry—a tenuous hope? Or, are we drawn to our subject’s left sternocleidomastoid, a muscle that is flexed at the base of her neck, and, in the process, creates a shadow that runs in parallel with the necklace.
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Maybe it’s the blur of light and shadow, a visual collage, too, of what swirled inside each of us during those days. Now, years removed from the scariest parts, we observe at an emotional distance in addition to a chronological one. Do we dare to return? When we look at a photo, an artifact of that time, how does it teach us to see more clearly our past selves? It is possible that, in our haste to flee the scene in 2020, that we never took the time—gave ourselves permission—to process the events of those scary and uncertain days. When we choose to view this photograph—really sit with it—do we open the possibility that out our current and future selves can be altered?
During the pandemic, healthcare practitioners were cast as heroes and villains by politicians and the media, and through them a wary public. But these polemics feel naïve and simple when applied to this photo. There’s something well beyond simple instruction, this gaze—like a healthcare Mona Lisa—that holds us not because what it implies is straightforward, but specifically because it isn’t.
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Our nurse captures us, as the space she inhabits is nearly an un-space. Clinical spaces, like hallways and waiting rooms, have a sameness that flattens our concept of them as distinct places. In Robin Hemley’s essay How to Change History: A Salvage Project about another medical space: “The waiting room was its own destination, the wait itself the entire point.” Here, however: a nurse with a mask, stethoscope and unwavering gaze, ready for whatever is next, she is the entire point. The place recedes—if it exists at all—in effect, becoming a part of the beige paint itself.
And this is where we might borrow from the practice of ekphrasis, a particular way of seeing that feels in harmony with the visual literacy skills we hope to build when looking at the medical space and at practitioners aesthetically. From Greek, ek meaning “out of or from” and phrazein meaning “to speak or explain,” poets may use a piece of visual art as the subject of a poem. Our brains are natural imitators, and, like the poet sketching a linguistic portrait of a real one, while we gaze at the portrait of the nurse, we create a representation of her in our mind, of what she signifies, a mimesis of those things that prompt us to understand beauty.
Yes, beauty. Scholar Stephen Cheeke maintains in Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis: “Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art.” Our partially shadowed nurse—ironic enough—shines light on what he means. This precise moment, captured by Humphreys, of a nurse in this nondescript hallway, hair pulled up and secured with a patterned cloth headband, will never happen again. “All photographs are memento mori,” Cheeke continues. “To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or things’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.” He goes on to help us understand our complicated relationship to photography as a precisely sliced and frozen moment as a testament to time’s relentless melt.
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As we look at this, or other photographs, our interpretive capabilities may be populated with better questions. We ask, what happened when this work was made? What influenced the artist’s work? The subject’s willingness to be captured in this way? What do the elements like the light and shadow communicate to us as viewers? What are the limits of what we can know from looking at this work?
This was Covid, in a specific temporal and physical place, and Humphreys’ photo cannot be dissected from our understanding. And, while this photo might also remind us of a time we would not choose to return to, it also reminds us of particular people and moments, ones full of beauty, can be found. That is, if we choose to look—no, to closely read—and embrace the ambiguity that is inherent in great photography—great art—the kind that provides new discoveries each time we linger. We may never know the significance of the necklace and pendant, but we will have to be satisfied that it was important enough for our nurse to wear on this day, in this moment, making it an unresolved detail that isn’t incidental, perhaps a memento mori itself.
There’s something well beyond simple instruction, this gaze—like a healthcare Mona Lisa—that holds us not because what it implies is straightforward, but specifically because it isn’t.
