Taking Care, 2018-in progress
« Taking care »
Entering a hospital is « taking a journey into the human condition ».
The hospital is the heart of life, where you can discover everything and come across all kinds of situations. An intermingling of life to come, death and a great deal of suffering. And I wanted to show that feeling of being a world in itself.
Microcosm but mega-body, you might say. The patient’s body, the center of the hospital. A center fragmented into specialties laid side by side. A body positioned or opposed between caregiver and patient.
If it is a world itself, the hospital is like an incredible health and social shock absorber on which we all land, whoever we are, at one time or another in our lives. A shock absorber now stretched to the limit by an unprecedented crisis.
Emergency departments are being asked to work in unison with a society that has itself become an emergency society, 24/7. The « make it or break » approach has become the option, the alternative everywhere around. And yet, when it comes down to it, no caregiver wants to renounce humanity in their care, which would mean renouncing themselves.
In my view, hospital care is a form of care that society provides for itself as a whole, far beyond the confines of a single healthcare establishment. This care is not quantifiable, it’s simply not measurable, and that’s basically what my images aim to show: the presence of bodies in all their states in the flow of life.