Archive | Beyond Botox
We showed up at the medical office early, I am always ridiculously early, to everything. We sat in the waiting room along with a small number of patients that all seemed to ignore me, my assistant and the large cart of gear. I stared at the fish tank and sat there anxious to get set up or started. Then we got our 15-20 minutes to set up after meeting the two women who agreed to let us photograph their procedure (and who signed releases). To say it was awkward is an understatement but we all had our assigned roles and all was to go smoothly. The room was small, there was the doctor and her assistant, me and my assistant and then the patient. Five of us, all jammed in close around one chair to witness what at least appears to be a simple procedure.
I photographed two procedures, one from pulled back to give a sense of what it was like to be in there and the other shot close for details of the procedure itself. It was really difficult to watch on one level yet on another level, it was really hard to look away. I could imagine the feeling of shot after shot, see the expressions ranging all over the map from the patients faces and then watching through the lens the needles poke and the blood drip, really heightened each prick and drop to an interesting level that at one point, I did look away from. I can remember watching one patient hands during the few moments I looked away, each time I saw her hand clench, I pressed the shutter… then I just had to look again, it was all too important to not witness every moment of, all the while pressing the shutter.
Then it was over. The most amazing part to me was how brave the women were. Not only making the choice to endure the pain, but for allowing us to photograph at all. It’s hard to tell in these two images but I was really close, for most of these images in fact, the patient had to straddle the tripod. So imagine sitting in that chair, imagine the doctor working away with a needle on your skin, imagine the bright medical light in your face, imagine a few extra lights/strobes going on your face and then imagine a tall, big, man between your feet with a giant camera on a tripod, watching it all in great detail… amazing.
* – Archive
I’ve done many wonderful assignments that for one reason or another, have gone under the radar. Be it in the publications the images were created for, or maybe the images worked great in the publication but not for anything else or simply the images just didn’t fit the rest of the work in my portfolio/promotion/whatever at the time. So I now want to share some here. It will always be random and hopefully as interesting as I find them…