Ischemic Imagery

4.22.2010

Final Portfolio

These ten images, taken throughout the semester, represent a theme I found I focused on often: texture.

Final Project and Semester Summation

I began writing a scientific case study and I ended with an emotive and introspective series of narratives.
My first sentence, "51 year old female presenting with non-fluent aphasia, telegraphic speech, apraxia, and mild hemiplegia impeding dexterity to right hand consistent with left anterior frontal cortex damage," made me think what my client would say. K.J. would look at me, wait until I finished, and would say, "so? I don't care."

K.J. Learning how to master her camera--it didn't take long

I began with a personal introduction detailing experiences that have shaken my faith and drastically altered my outlook in respect to the health care field, a profession which I so transparently idolize. A few weeks after the start of my semester, in an EMT course, I witnessed horrifying events in the hospital.

"Within ten minutes of the start of my first shift in Winter Park Memorial Hospital, paramedics rushed in an unresponsive John Doe, a male in his late 40’s or early 50’s. He was found less than a block away from the ER, a concrete divider stopped his car, still in drive. He was gurgling and a terrifying shade of purple. I grabbed a respirator and began ventilating the man while the trauma room became a warzone, with the doctor shouting orders and nurses coordinating the scene. Initially, I was excited to see such a “cool” case, and surprised by the essential responsibility of ensuring a patent airway and deliver oxygen, assist in cardiopulmonary respiration, and the delivery of basic salts to reduce the patient’s acidosis. At the time, high on the adrenaline of a true emergency, I had no idea how affecting this night would become."

"Everyone in the room knew the damage had been done and was irreversible. As I manually breathed the patient on the trip back to the ER trauma room, I realized this was my first true encounter with death.

The patient was no longer John Doe, but a 52-year-old father, a husband, a son, and a beloved music teacher. The room was crowded with his family, obviously in shock. While I waited for a technician to hook the patient back up to an automatic respirator, I squeezed the ventilation bag every six seconds. I watched as the doctor walked into the room, nonchalantly informed the family that the patient suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and that there was absolutely nothing he could do."

"I checked up on the family every quarter hour and explained to them anything I could. What scared me the most, much more than the fragility of life, the suddenness, the arbitrariness, the permanence, the absence of hope and dignity, was that I seemed to be the only one who cared."

Still, I had set out to write a case-study, and rationalized that it too would be personal.

"Clinical work in neuropsychology differs greatly from the trend of impersonality and façades of objectivism the scientific community so fervently defends. All other organs in the body can be reduced to specific anatomies, physiologies, and biochemistries, yet the brain transcends even the most astute reductionist techniques. Case studies, detailed and personal accounts of patients, have little choice but to include emotional developments between a clinician and patient. While I understand the need for double-blind pharmacologic studies, assessing individual therapies on a patient-to-patient basis gives neuropsychology an entirely different aesthetic from other descriptive sciences. Each brain is as idiosyncratic as the individual it represents, and, in tragic circumstances of injury, each presentation of signs, symptoms, and compensation techniques is unique."

I grappled with the pretentious jargon and insensitivity. I wanted to explore what I had actually learned and give credit the relationships that I had formed.

"I believe my experience in the Photography as Language course has truly bolstered my ideals of a patient- or client-centered approach to treatment. K.J. is extraordinarily intelligent, focused, and determined. She requires a personalized therapy plan and individual attention because, frankly, she is easily bored. She expressed resentment at the “stupid” generic formal testing, but her independent drive for recovery and self-betterment extends her patience. Two times a week, K.J. navigates the city of Orlando on the public transportation system (not a simple task) and is punctual and energetic.

I was lucky enough to develop more than a superficial relationship with this phenomenal woman. I absolutely loved her mannerisms and personality quirks. K.J. was never once quiet with her praise or criticism, unabashedly walking to the board to point out an element she liked or responding to another client’s photographic grouping as “stupid.” She pushed me to think creatively and work especially hard (her criticism could easily take a turn and target me), yet still provided endless entertainment, astounding photographs, and insight into her life—past, present, and future."

"That first fateful day, we had to select one of our printed photographs to show to our new client to jumpstart the speech therapy. I chose a bland image of a person, beach, and birds. Inspired by a paper I had just read for my neuropsychology class outlining the double disassociation of noun/verb duality, I attempted to be an amateur neuropsychologist. I felt the image provided a story and a plethora of descriptive words to review for an aphasic patient: sand, clouds/cloudy, birds, flight/flying, running, beach, smile/smiling, and various other nouns, verbs, and adverbs. Patients often have trouble with either words related to imagery or trouble with more nebulous concepts. It's easier to imagine a bird in your head, but the imagery of "flying" requires one to create a mental scenario with an object to partake in flight[1].

Of course, I got what was coming for me. K.J. is extremely feisty, extraordinarily smart and quick-witted. Well, she took one look at my picture, frowned, said “ew,” and pointed and smiled to Diego's photograph of beautifully composed and vibrant marker heads, creating a rainbow pattern of colors."

Alright, so maybe this isn't the best picture... Compare for yourself:

Image credit: Diego!

"While my own photographic skill developed, K.J. appreciated my final assignment of the narrative. I had taken photographs at a construction site, and I feel April 7^th and 14^th represented major achievements. When asked the standardized prompts of “what story is being told?” K.J. instantaneously explained that the “morning sunlight through window,” “worker on stilts,” and “nighttime, keep out” represented the chronological progression of the construction site. She became very talkative, in fact, more talkative and excited than I had ever seen her (well, maybe minus the days after the birth of her grandson). She said my narrative gave her a sense of Déjà vu, and from this I gained memories and insight into her former life. K.J. used to hand-draw architectural models, working for a construction and design company. She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the name of her former employer, and it was obvious to all of us that she missed the job. She was an architect, an artist, and a mathematician, but even a stroke could not rob her of her intelligence, wit, and amiable personality."

You never know what will get someone talking... See Previous Post on Narrative Assignment for an update and detailed account of this essential conversation.

"Her personality, intelligence, and photographic skill are wonderfully summed up by her own series of narrative photographs. Like most of the Rollins students and other clients in the class, K.J. ran into some difficulty attempting to plan out a series of three interconnecting images that conveyed a story. Looking at the contents of her memory card on my computer screen, K.J. picked out her favorite images (by this point in the semester, she no longer needed our input—she knew darn well which pictures looked good). We agreed on a series of nature photographs, but still struggled to find a plot. It came to me that we could use my own narrative cop-out: the chronological order. Kathy took great pleasure from the irony that all of these pictures happened to have been taken all within a few minutes of each other at two pm.

The “morning” was a macro picture of American Beautyberry flowers with enough waxy residue on the leaves to look like “morning dew.” Secondly, we chose a picture with much more neutral light, depicting flowering reeds in the shade. Representing “afternoon,” was a bit of a stretch, but it worked well in the series. What pulled the narrative together was an impressive and dramatic waterscape with a silhouette of a heron, perched on Kathy’s favorite retention pond outside the clinic. K.J. retains alexic difficulties, and struggled to read the pre-written descriptions to the class. Slowly, and with focus, K.J. was able to pronounce every word with only a few cues.

K.J.'s "Morning"

She has taken some absolutely amazing images this semester...

"In the few months of the photography as language program, K.J. clicked the shutter button over nine hundred times. K.J. understood the camera mechanics rapidly, and displayed a very quick learning curve for aesthetic and technical prowess. The workshop was “way more fun” than just “sitting in a room,” and even if the Photography as Language program does nothing more than reenergize and instill more motivation in clients with aphasia, the undertaking is undoubtedly worth the effort.

K.J.'s passion for her family: her son-in-law and her Grandson, the latter of whom was the subject of quite a few portrait shots.

This is one of scores of her pictures that show just how effective the Photograph as Language program can be.

"I’m going to miss trying to guess what her “teeny-weeny” mystery object of the moment might be, her frustrated "what the hells?!” pictures demonstrating her devotion to her family, and the pleasure of combing through scores of impressive images. K.J.’s top pick from her first assignment, the frame, adorns the flier for the Photograph as Language collaborative workshop display. “I was like, oh my god, look at my p-picture!” she exclaimed with her typical enthusiasm. "

--K.J.--

Further reading:

Jenni A. Ogden, 2005. Fractured Minds: A Case-Study Approach to Clinical Neuropsychology. Ch. 8: “The Breakdown of Language: Case Studies of Aphasia” pg. 83-98. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Theodor Landis, 2006: “Emotional words: What’s so different from just words?”Cortex – Vol. 42, 2006.

[1] Claudio Luzzatti, Silvia Aggujaro, and Davide Crepaldi, 2006: “Verb-noun double dissociation in aphasia: Theoretical and neuroanatomical foundations.” Cortex – Vol. 42, 2006.

4.07.2010

Assignment 4# --The Narrative

I had a tough time putting this assignment together. I had taken about ninety pictures at various times of the day on this construction site (more on that in a bit), and a few scores of pictures representing various stages and elements of botany and horticulture.

I wanted my images to be linked, to have strong associations, but to also be alluring by themselves. I chose this set of three images because to me, it conveyed a sense of loneliness, but still capturing the entropy of construction. It's so interesting looking at the process of architecture and construction, because at first, demolishing the house, gutting walls, breaking windows, and tearing off sections of roof produces an end result that epitomizes entropy. Then the chaos becomes more organized, with levels and balances erecting right angles and patterns. The evolution continues with the sterilized details, the perfectly evened drywall, and all of the final touches that makes a structure feel complete.

In my narrative, I attempted to chronologically portray both the order and the entropy, with a bit more emphasis on the grunge. (Below will be my next series of images that did not make the cut, but were still compelling enough to make me wonder if I'd made the right choice).

Anyways, a bit of history. These images are very personal to me, because this was the house I grew up in. I moved in when I was four, and most of my earliest vivid episodic memories are of helping my parents design the house and participate in the initial construction. That was about fifteen years ago, and my mother made the decision to remodel--no--gut, the house. I was quite opposed, but she figured the house needed to reflect the fact the family now consisted of older kids (college and high school) and the rationalization that she and my father would probably keep the house well into retirement. It's been nearly a year since the first walls were cut down, and I have been photodocumenting the construction in one form or another the entire time.

The above narrative represents the morning light, the afternoon work, and the evening abandonment the site goes through every day. These images don't do justice to how feverish and busy the site actually is, but I wanted to portray a more serene, dark, and mystical aura to make the pictures a bit more interesting than standard "oh, they're building a house" images. I thought the images worked well together because each has only one light source--the morning or afternoon sun from the windows and the bright florescent light illuminating the area that used to be our garage.

Only one image has a human element, and I decided to include that because it synced well with the darker, moody motif (edited, the image is much darker, and the printed version works much better in the set). The top and bottom images, my two favorites, show the collateral damage, the dirt, garbage, and grime left over. The series is supposed to represent the construction site before, during, and after human presence. The sharpie "VERY FRAGILE" on the plastic sheeting and the illegible sharpied disregarded plastic bag in the bottom image allow this narrative to flow not only chronologically, but also in imagery themes.

UPDATE:

Excerpt from Final Project:

"When asked the standardized prompts of “what story is being told?” K.J. instantaneously explained that the “morning sunlight through window,” “worker on stilts,” and “nighttime, keep out” represented the chronological progression of the construction site. She became very talkative, in fact, more talkative and excited than I had ever seen her (well, maybe minus the days after the birth of her grandson). She said my narrative gave her a sense of Déjà vu, and from this I gained memories and insight into her former life. K.J. used to hand-draw architectural models, working for a construction and design company. She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the name of her former employer, and it was obvious to all of us that she missed the job. She was an architect, an artist, and a mathematician, but even a stroke could not rob her of her intelligence, wit, and amiable personality.

On a roll, K.J. transitioned to the subtext of my photographic narrative, struggling but succeeding to come up with the word “lonely” on her own. K.J. has trouble verbalizing specific emotion, but always projects it with body language, facial expressions, and simple utterances such as “ew” or “eek.” I feel K.J. truly internalized the union of photographic technicality and interpretive speech therapy literacy. She was able to answer complex prompts such as “do formal elements such as composition and framing, quality of light, focus or vantage point influence your interpretation of the photograph?”

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In the following set, I focused more on details of the chaotic collateral from the construction, but ultimately chose the above three as my final narrative because I thought they could at least represent some form of story. These following images relate to one another in theme and color, but I don't feel they conclusively tell me any form of story. But hey, they're not bad pictures, so here they are.