For the past six years I have been taking photographs in hospitals, documenting surgeries and other medical procedures. My goal is to chronicle the two sides of health care: the highly clinical perspective from the health care professional's point of view, and the emotional journey experienced by patients and their families and friends.

When I started this project in 1995, I was motivated by my fascination with human anatomy. I find the body's complex machinery to be incredibly beautiful, and set out to capture this in a very direct, matter-of-fact way— very much like a surgeon approaches his or her work. But it quickly became clear that I was only capturing half of the story. After photographing hundreds of operations, I was left cold by my myopic point of view and started to peer behind the surgical sheets that separate patients' faces from the surgeons working on them.

Unlike a surgeon, I could not accept their anonymity. What trauma, fear or joy did they experience? How did they get there and what would the results be? I found that their stories begged to be told, too.

So I have broadened my work to illustrate the patients' stories. For example, I recently took photographs of multiple operations on a four-year-old girl's leg— she had 20, in all— after she was run over accidentally with a lawnmower. After focusing initially on the surgeries, the project expanded naturally to capture the intensely personal experience of the mother and child.

As a documentarian I hope that I can move people by giving them a deeper understanding and appreciation of their internal makeup. I have the privilege to witness both how powerful and vulnerable we are, and hope that the poignancy of this contradiction resonates through my photographs.