TIME TO HEAL | LEICA GALLERY

Time to Heal

 

TIME TO HEAL is a tribute to the healthcare professionals who stand on the front line against an invisible enemy. Created in hospitals across Madrid during March and April 2020, this personal project by photographer Emilia Brandão (São Paulo, Brazil, 1982) brought together 150 professionals.

“In mid-March, in Madrid, my adopted city, my life, like that of the rest of humanity, changed radically with the emergence of the virus that causes COVID-19. While confined at home with my family, I felt an urgent need to help and to photograph those fighting the virus on the front line—the people being called heroes.”

The aim of this project is to portray staff from every department of Madrid’s hospitals, who are fighting and sacrificing their lives to save and heal thousands of people with COVID-19. They are an example of courage and humanity in the face of the health crisis we are living through, contributing to a process of collective healing and reminding us that only together can we overcome this pandemic.

To create TIME TO HEAL, a photographic studio was set up for several days inside each hospital. An invitation to participate was issued at each one, and professionals who wished to take part in the project visited the studio during breaks in their shifts.

“As they worked for days and hours without rest, constantly in action, with neither the time nor the energy to process everything happening within them, I offered them a pause, a chair beneath my light, so that I could get to know them and hear how they were feeling. By inviting them into a moment of calm and introspection, many connected with their emotions for the first time since the pandemic began. Beyond the heroic image they carried, I was able to see, up close, the vulnerable nature of these human beings, whose duty to heal and care for others sets them apart.”

“I believe a portrait carries the force of a round of applause, and I felt they needed that recognition. I wanted to give them faces and names, to create memories for some of the people who had experienced the fight against the virus first-hand. I was counting on photography’s enduring power to gain value over time: that they might look at these photographs and keep them as reminders of what they had lived through, and that the portraits might become their lasting traces, forever etched into this moment in world history.”

Thanks to the support of three Madrid hospitals—Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón and Hospital Universitario del Sureste—which opened their doors, TIME TO HEAL is now a reality.

Text: Álvaro Yabarra Zavala

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DATE: oct-dec.2020

PLACE: Leica Gallery, Madrid/Spain

CURATOR: Álvaro Yabarra Zavala