Photoessay: Joy

Interview with: Dr. Dawn Lim, Emily Nguyen, Christine Moon, Ali AlMail

Q: To start, could you introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your experience with the arts and photography in particular?

Emily: Hello, my name is Emily. I am a secondyear medical student. I got started in the arts when I was three years old when I started doing ballet. I did ballet for 14 years. I learned a lot about classical dance through performing different variations and repertoires. Ballet helped me appreciate movement as an art form, as well as the aesthetic artistry behind dance through the makeup and costumes. When I was twelve years old, I started doing photography with my iPod Touch. I just enjoyed going outside and taking pictures of things that interested me. A big influence was definitely my dad. I would follow him around when he did his photo trips. He would enter local competitions, and so oftentimes, I would be one of the models that he would photograph. When I was 18, I got my first official DSLR camera and since then, I’ve been enjoying taking photos as a hobby. I mainly focus on architecture and lifestyle photography.

Ali: My name is Ali, and I am a second-year medical student. My main artistic medium is painting and sketching. I took art classes in high school, and my undergrad degree is in visual arts. Art helps me emotionally de-stress, but also to think about very complicated ideas and thoughts. In terms of getting into photography, I started that in undergrad when I took a class about film photography. Photography isn’t just about translating a moment into a photograph. I learned that a huge amount of effort goes into the composition. The process of capturing and developing film made me fall in love with photography, specifically black and white photography, which you will see a lot of in the photoessay.

Christine: Hi, I’m Christine. I’m a sixth-year MD/PhD student at Queen’s. I’ve played violin and piano my whole life and received formal training in music. My mom’s a ceramicist and so I grew up surrounded by art and art materials. Aside from pottery, she also did darkroom photography. That is where photography entered my life, but I’ve never received any formal training. So I really loved this class as well and this opportunity to explore.

Dr. Dawn Lim: My name is Dawn. I grew up in a science-based family which really didn’t encourage the arts. I was always a reader, and from an early age, I really enjoyed writing. In 2012, I started to seriously study photography and writing as part of my burnout journey from medicine. Gradually, it became a bigger part of my life; I found it enjoyable to have that change from shift work to night classes in writing and photography. I tend towards documentary photography and nonfiction writing, which I think go together really well. My particular areas of interest are motherhood, as well as shame and resilience.

Q: Can you tell us how this group came together and the origin of this photo essay?

Dr. Lim: So Allan Peterkin, who I’ve known for a few years, decided to formalize the electives for the Humanities in Medicine course. He decided to have a photography elective and asked me to be the spearhead of that. As I got to know the styles of the members of the group, I thought it would be more interesting and more uplifting to talk about “joy.” Coming off the pandemic, joy isn’t something that a lot of us have had during the past few years. Joy is a complex emotion with a bright and dark side. Sometimes people will sabotage their experience of joy because it feels too vulnerable. Sometimes we experience something that’s joyful, and we sabotage it by thinking about the worst case scenario to offset that joy. And so, for this photoessay, we decided to focus on joy in all its different forms.

Q: Could you speak to the process from taking the photos to creating this essay?

Emily: It was a very iterative process; we’ve met monthly on Zoom since October. We would screen share and go through our new photos that we added to a Google Drive. It was helpful to get to know each other’s creative styles. Originally, we viewed all of our photos in color before converting them to black and white. It was really helpful to see the themes and how everyone has unique comfort zones. For example, I mainly gravitate towards taking pictures vertically, and I never really noticed that until I saw my photos laid out in front of me in comparison with everyone else’s work. After we selected the photos we liked best, we met in-person in February to sequence the photos. Dr. Lim printed them off for us, so we could see them in cohesion. This was my favorite part of this entire elective. We had a discussion about 59 how we wanted to make the framework for our piece. Like Ali mentioned, there are ups and downs in our photos. We wanted to tell a story together. It was a hard process to eliminate photos, but we ended up with a good bunch that make sense together.

Q: Can you tell us more about why you chose to physically print out the photographs?

Dr. Lim: People are so used to looking at photographs on their phones or digital cameras. We discussed how important the printing process was for seeing the fidelity of the photograph. The paper finish really makes a big difference in what you finally see. It’s really incredible to see the photographs inperson on different papers and being able to physically move them around. That’s what we did, switching up the order to see how that changed the story. I think that is the most fun part of creating a photoessay.

Q: I feel like the photos all come together quite cohesively. Can you tell about how you decided on the style and focus of the photos (e.g., black and white, nature)?

Christine: What I noticed about our photos is that there are a lot of elements of nature. We find our joy in nature. You can see the human in nature–literally with people but also with man-made structures. There’s this theme of nature making us feel small and big, and that was something that carried into the photos that were ultimately decided on for our final essay.

Ali: In our drafts, we had some coloured pictures, but eventually decided on the black and white theme. We tend to conflate joy and happiness, but the theme illustrates the foreboding aspect of joy. You’re experiencing joy, but you know that it’s going to end. That’s reflected in the pictures too. They don’t all necessarily seem “happy,” and the photoessay has ups and downs. We hope that it is more reflective of joy, because joy is a state that is independent of the ups and downs of life. Joy is something that you can practice throughout different emotions. That’s why you see those ups and downs in the pictures, and also why we chose the black and white theme.

Q: Would you like to share the thought process behind any of the photos in the essay?

Emily: I took the photo of the clock shadow (photograph 6). This past summer, I went to Paris with my mom. It was evening time, the sun was setting, and we were inside a store on Rue Saint-Honoré. The clock was on the outside of the building, but I was taking the picture from the inside. There was a partly seethrough linen curtain covering the window, which is why the photo has that gauzy texture. I remember seeing the light and how the shadow was cast, and it just gave me a sense of calm. This picture reminds me to take time to slow down and appreciate the little moments in life, even something as mundane as checking the time. You can always find beauty in your everyday life. 5- Breathing in life at Mt Seorak

Ali: I took the picture of the Santa Monica beach (photograph 4) when I was there over reading week. I saw this kid chasing a bird. The bird would fly away and then land kind of close by, and the kid would keep running after it. There was this sense of the joy of being free; the kid did not care about what was going on, just chasing the bird. As well, water has a very calming effect for me. I associate that picture with the sound of the waves in my head. The black and white composition renders the mystical, foreboding aspect of joy. There’s this sense of chasing a feeling even though joy is independent of happiness and sadness. It’s more of a steady state that you practice.

Christine: The fifth photo is one of Mount Seorak, which is in Korea. In Korean culture, mountains are very spiritual. In the presence of mountains, you experience a sense of smallness that I think is really special. They melt away your human problems, because they are so much bigger than you. They came so long before us and will stay long after we leave the earth, and so I wanted to create a photo that showed that.

Q: Can you speak about what it means to use people as your subjects in a photo?

Ali: I think the tricky part of photographing a human or any moving subject is that things change so rapidly over time. By the time you think you have the frame, it might be gone. I think having a lot of pictures helps. Photographing people helps you focus on the details of a person’s face that you wouldn’t notice on a day-to-day basis. In the photograph of my aunt (photograph 2), you can see the wrinkles that tell the story that she loves to smile all the time and is a very positive, optimistic person. That photo was taken on her 70th birthday, and she was laughing in all of the pictures I took of her. The eye wrinkles signal that she’s been smiling and laughing for her whole life even though there were ups and downs. Whenever I see her, I remember all that she’s been through. She means a lot to me and has done a lot for me in my life, and so this photo is very sentimental and precious to me.

Emily: One of my photos features my brother standing amongst some very tall trees (photograph 8). We were out for a run in Healdsburg, which is a small town in California, and on the side of the road, and there were these really massive trees. I asked my brother to stand in the middle of them, because I thought it would be an interesting contrast due the stark difference in heights. For me, this photo represents a joyous moment with my brother. I like to include people in my photos for memories–to remind me of things that we did together.

Q: We’d love to hear your biggest takeaway from working with one another on this photo essay.

Ali: Joy is very subjective and very personal to each one of us. In sharing these pictures, we got to know what we each value and how we define joy. It was a very vulnerable experience to bond over the medium of photography, but also, the meaning behind the photos. We met on Thursdays at 8 pm, late in the day, but I always looked forward to those meetings, because they were a chance to talk about art and forget about medical school. I cherished those meeting times.

Emily: One thing I’m going to take away from this experience is to continue experimenting with how I take my photos and to think about including more subjects, emotions, and expressions. I learned a lot from Dr. Lim about printing photos. This elective was the first time I’ve printed my photos on proper high-quality paper, so I am now interested in learning more about how different papers can affect my images. I’m excited to experiment more with printing.

Christine: One thing I’m going to take away from the classes is when Dawn taught us about playing with composition. We can take pictures of the same scene or with the same focus in different ways. Emily really loves to photograph architecture, which I had never really taken photos of. Ali took a lot of photos of people he loves, and I thought that was so special and something that I definitely want to do more of. Working with this group as a non-UofT student also helped me realize how similar med students across Canada are, even across different schools.

Q: I am sure this is something you’ve reflected on in the creation of this project, so could you share what the theme of “joy” means to you in terms of your career in medicine, as well as life in general?

Dr. Lim: For me, joy is being present with gratitude in the moment without judging. It was so fun to meet the students and learn about how they create and work.It was just so wonderful to see how each and every student had their own interpretation of joy, and how they all uniquely explored this idea.

Ali: Joy to me is about taking that time to reflect, pause, and consider everything that is going on in your life in a moment. In medicine, we’re really about trying to achieve the next milestone, and we’re just always go, go, go. We might not reflect on what has happened in our lives or in our interactions with patients. And so, joy is taking that time to soak in everything in any given moment or experience.

Christine: I think this class really helped me think about joy. It’s so funny because we spend so much of our time working, studying, or researching, but the things that I photographed that brought me joy were family, nature, and friends. It is not that work or research can’t bring joy, but it made me recontextualize how I spend my day and think about the ways I can bring joy into all parts of my life. It is important that in the pursuit of medicine as a career, we don’t lose sight of that.

Emily: Joy is appreciating the little moments in life. It is taking a pause and looking around 69 “We discussed how joy does not necessarily equal happiness; joy is an internal feeling of fulfillment. It’s the little memories and appreciation for the mundane that has helped me get through tough times.” you to find something good. It makes you feel light inside. We discussed how joy does not necessarily equal happiness; joy is an internal feeling of fulfillment. It’s the little memories and appreciation for the mundane that has helped me get through tough times. Joy is something that I bring forward in medicine too. Everyone experiences bad days, but remembering your good memories will help you stay motivated and push through the hard times.

Q: Do you have any advice for new photographers and those putting photoessays together?

Ali: Photograph things that move you. If you see something and feel a connection with it, don’t get all in your head about if it will make a good picture. Just do your best and photograph that moment, that emotion that you’re feeling, and then evaluate it later on. Otherwise, I can get too cognitive and cerebral about pictures when it should be more from the heart. I use my iPhone 12 Pro, so I don’t have a professional camera. You can work with any camera that you have!

Dr. Lim: I have some advice that was given to me from my first photography teacher. He told me to take a lot of photographs. I’ll never forget–his first assignment to me was to submit 1000 photographs within a month. Not only will this force you to practice a lot, but it also forces you to look at things differently; if you’re living in the same city, there’s only so many ways you can make the same scene look interesting. It forces you to compose things in different ways. In the beginning, it doesn’t really matter so much what kind of camera to use. With regards to creating a photoessay, it’s really important to photograph with the idea of a goal of 10 to 15 photographs for a photo series. It’s quite easy to create one amazing photograph, but it’s much harder to sustain the creativity for a series of photographs that will tell a story.

Q: Lastly, how will you incorporate art in your career as a doctor?

Christine: In medical school and my PhD, art has always been a way to decompress from difficult experiences or difficult days. Through journaling, I am also able to document the good experiences. Art is a way to learn from both the good and the bad, as well as to share those experiences with other people. Right now, it feels really personal for me.

Emily: Art has taught me to approach every single interaction I have as a story. Whether it is a patient interaction or looking at art, I try to keep a very open mind and a non-judgmental front. I let art, whether it be a painting or a photograph, speak for itself. I also let my patients speak for themselves so I can tailor their care based on what they say. On a more literal level, whenever I walk into a clinic and I see paintings or photographs, it calms me down a lot. I want to use art in my physical settings, such as clinics and offices one day. I will use art as a representation of my personality and to create a welcoming environment for patients.

Ali: I think art has a personal value for me. Similar to what Christine said, it allows me to decompress and is an emotional outlet. Maybe this is a product of my more formal training in art, but I always like my pieces to revolve around a question or an experience that I’ve had. I look forward to seeing what questions come up during my practice of medicine and how I might answer or pose those questions through visual art pieces. One thing I’ve been trying to remind myself is that medicine is a science and an art. It is a privilege to care for people and to be present with them in those vulnerable and small moments. Maybe we’re not creating art per se in the visual sense, but we can still have a sense of appreciation for what is going on and realize that each patient’s story is a form of art.

Dr. Lim: Studying art has been a really great way to self reflect. It’s very easy, as you become more senior, to look at your work as purely technical and your interactions as being transactional. Writing and photography has made my whole experience in medicine so much better because it makes me value human interactions as a way to connect with others. Art helps me slow down and appreciate each moment of the day, and even more so with a pandemic. For me, story is the way home. That is why I create and tell stories. We need more artist-doctors. Art and medicine are not separate for me; the two will always be combined.