70th Anniversary of the NHS: Portraits of London’s Busiest Major Trauma Center
July 5, 2018 was the 70th Anniversary of the NHS. To mark the occasion, I took portraits of A+E staff at dawn after their nightshifts. Shooting everyone from the surgeons to the student nurses, the series looks at the personal sacrifice required to take of care a major city’s emergencies. As an American, I understand how important socialised healthcare is, and that it must be protected from privatisation and well funded for the benefit of all society. The constant political pressure on the NHS to deliver more with less turns this personal sacrifice into a statistic, at the cost of both the staff members and the people who depend on them.
The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel is one of the busiest major trauma centres in the UK. It played a major role in treating the patients during the London Bridge attacks and is home to London's Air Ambulance. The Emergency Department cared for over 150,000 patients in 2016-17.
I hope give a human face to these statistics. The subjects’ faces reveal the exhaustion of a night spent saving lives, while their poses show their resilience – the staff regularly work four nightshifts in a row. For now, these images can put a face to the numbers and remind people of what we take for granted until we are in desperate situations.
Click the images for stories from the front.
