While practicing medicine in New York City over the years, I have found that visual experience not only complements my profession—it deepens my relationship to it. The clinical world I inhabit is one of precision, urgency, and discipline. Patients fill my hours; it is my responsibility to prevent their suffering, to heal where I can. Yet, to fulfill this role, I must maintain a necessary emotional distance. That boundary is both a safeguard and a limitation.
Art allows me to bridge that distance. Through writing and photography, I can step closer to the emotional dimensions that clinical practice often demands I hold at bay. I had long imagined pairing my own photographs—captured from within my lived reality—with the books I write. The camera, like the stethoscope, becomes a tool of observation, but one that listens differently.
Meeting Ed Kashi was a turning point. His socially engaged visual storytelling affirmed what I had only intuitively known: that images, when shaped by a sense of justice and empathy, can also be a form of care. Chronic kidney disease, one of the conditions I encounter most frequently, exists not only as a biological challenge but also as a deeply social one—defined by inequities, access, and individual struggle. Ed’s work helped me realize that my role as a physician could expand, that I could use visual language to advocate, document, and perhaps even intervene beyond the clinical setting.
This is what led me to this workshop: a desire to learn how to see differently, and to create with intention. My practice is evolving—from healing bodies to telling stories that may, in their own way, help to heal systems.
I had not come to take photos—not without permission from the agency I had worked with—but perhaps to listen, to witness, to make something with others. I did not even know what I was looking for. I was tired. Marseille pressed into me like a worn-out negative—faded, sun-streaked, yellowing at the edges of my heart. I had to shed something: the imagined image, the curated plan. I had to touch the pavement, breathe in the market smoke, and if I was lucky, find something yellow that spoke back.
Then, by chance, a ceramic shop opened to me like a frame. I learned to shape with my hands again. I met a girl there—just like me. Still chasing a dream with a forming enthusiasm. Anxious in the fresh rhythm of her new job. Sometimes, the point is not where you begin. It is that you showed up. That you stayed. That the journey, soft and slow, is already sketching itself into light. The smile, that you will like to see in faces.
