Documentary Photography in a German Hospital: The End of Film in Radiology

I would like to thank the patients who gave their consent to be photographed and the staff of this teaching hospital for their generous and very friendly co-operation. In particular I am indebted to Dr Jörg Larsen for initiating and personally funding the project and also to his wife for her very generous hospitality during my stay in Göttingen. It is always good to find a vision in people through photography.

This project came about because the hospital management decided to undertake a very considerable expansion and upgrading of the radiology facilities, as part of wider developments in the hospital. As a result of the planned change the department will become unrecognizable. In addition new technology will be employed as part of the modernisation that will bring the use of large format film to an end. It was therefore fitting and perhaps ironic that as a digital photographer I recorded how film is presently used and affects the work life of those concerned. In view of the fact that clinical radiology was established in Germany by the nobel prize winner Wilhelm Röntgen, it was particularly apposite to to do this little project in Germany, the home of radiology. Approximately forty years from now no working diagnostic radiographer or radiologist will have had any experience of film in their working life so it is appropriate that the practices of today are recorded.

Whilst there, word spread about my presence. I was therefore asked to photograph scenes on the ward and take doctor portraits by the score. Some of these unexpected opportunities are reflected in the galleries below.

Hospital web site : http://www.ekweende.de/