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Time to Heal: A tribute to our healthcare workers for their fight against the pandemic

Tears, lost gazes, flashes of frustration, grimaces of despair… Photographer Emilia Brandão captures the collapse caused by Covid, but not the collapse of a healthcare system; rather, the collapse of those people we call heroes.

During the first wave of the pandemic, our applause broke the silence of confined and frightened cities. It was our way of cheering each other on and encouraging healthcare workers in the fight against the coronavirus. The months of March and April were a succession of reports of deaths in nursing homes, thousands of daily admissions, and hundreds of fatalities, with ICUs overwhelmed…

In light of this situation, Brazilian photographer Emilia Brandão picked up a camera, with the support of Leica and the NGO Doctors of the World, and ventured into hospitals to portray the heroes in scrubs who were on the front lines of the battle. “It was my way of giving back to this city and this country something of what they have given me,” she explains. This is how the exhibition Time to Heal: Portraits of Healthcare Professionals in the Battle Against Covid-19 was born, which will be held at the Leica Gallery on José Ortega y Gasset Street 34 until November 12.

The author’s goal was to convey what was happening during the pandemic and healthcare collapse through the hospital workers. “I understood that this was the best place because it was where the coronavirus had leveled everyone.” From the cleaning lady to the director, no one escaped the consequences of a virus that they did not know how to stop. They all felt fear, despair, frustration, pain, and exhaustion…

In front of the lens, 150 professionals from the Gregorio Marañón, Puerta del Hierro, and Sureste hospitals broke down, one by one. “I wanted to offer them a place of rest and tranquility, where they could feel comfortable. I thought that this way they would tell me how it was going, but I never thought that what they had inside was that,” Brandão says, with teary eyes and a voice choked with emotion as she looks at the 30 portraits on display. “The news talked about the collapse of the healthcare system, but the ones collapsing were the people.”

“WE ONLY DID OUR JOB”

Healthcare workers state that if they were heroes, they would have superpowers and there would not have been a shortage of beds, medication, or oxygen, emphasizing that “we only did our job.” This was reiterated by Dr. José Eugenio Guerrero Sanz, head of the ICU at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid, when he accepted the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord on behalf of all healthcare workers on October 16.

Dr. José Félix Hoyo, president of Doctors of the World, also stated this during the presentation of the exhibition Time to Heal. And Emilia Brandão repeats it: “They are just humans, not heroes. People who made an enormous effort.”

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