鈥淚 wanted to take medical practice out of the hospital and give artists access to it,鈥� explains Dr. Michele Larose (PGME'90). A pediatric neuropsychiatrist and multidisciplinary artist with a degree from Curtin University in Australia, Dr. Larose created the Michele Larose鈥擮sler Library Artist-in-Residence Programme in 2016 with an initial commitment of $30,000.
She says she was delighted with St茅phan Ballard鈥檚 work, which links the very particular environment of surgery to many dimensions of art history and brings out its theatrical dimension, all without losing sight of bodies and disease. 鈥淭he result was in no way a documentary. St茅phan鈥檚 artistic vision allows viewers to experience the intimacy in the images.鈥�
Head Librarian Mary Hague-Yearl considers Ballard鈥檚 work entirely in keeping with the wishes of Sir William Osler (MDCM 1872), who created the library with a bequest aimed at bringing people together. 鈥淗is wish was to build a library that would serve the medical community, broadly speaking. This exhibition honoured that spirit by bringing people to the library who would not have come otherwise.鈥�
The deep humanity of surgery
The work on display juxtaposed different processes, from the reconstruction of a child鈥檚 hand, removal of a leg tumour and dissection of a cadaver to open-heart surgery and a bioengineering experiment. The show was permeated with the bluish ambience of operating theatres. St茅phan Ballard contrasted this with details that caught his eye, such as the movement and tension of the hands of surgeons鈥攚ho are mostly women.
Each of the series was a dialogue between past, present and future. Some photos show a vertebra created by 3D printing, or a battery and wires surgeons use to make sure nerves are still functioning. Others feature 19th-century Japanese anatomical images or the more classical prints of German painter Albrecht D眉rer鈥攆amous for introducing linear perspective鈥攚ho died in 1528. Another photograph shows details of a thousand-year-old surgical instrument from the eastern Mediterranean.
鈥淏allard鈥檚 photos even included sketches surgeons had prepared to plan their operations,鈥� adds Larose. 鈥淚鈥檝e met many medical photographers, but none who paid attention to that kind of detail.鈥�
The four previous recipients of the award were quite taken by the pathology specimens on display in the Maude Abbott Medical Museum at 不良研究所, Hague-Yearl explains. 鈥淪t茅phan was interested in medical technique. However, his work took a different direction when he discovered the historical background available in our library.鈥�
The photographer agrees: 鈥淯p until the 20th century, there were very strong links between visual artists and surgeons, firstly, because surgeons referred to anatomical charts, which were veritable works of art. The other reason is that in the 18th and 19th centuries, medical schools invited artists to their anatomy and dissection classes so they could make better representations of the human body.鈥�
A surgical thunderbolt
Ballard, who grew up in a photo lab (his father was a photographer), studied photography and art design at Concordia University from 1989 to 1993. Photography was leaving the realm of chemistry and entering that of digital technology at the time. Ballard was able to further develop his art thanks to an artist鈥檚 residency in Banff in 1996. He spent the three years prior to the COVID pandemic at the National Film Board, where he worked as director of photography on a large stop-motion animation project.
Ballard discovered the world of medicine and, specifically, surgery during the pandemic when he took a job as a medical photographer at CHU Sainte-Justine, a mother-and-child hospital in Montreal. It was 鈥渓ove at first sight,鈥� he says.
Instead of following the technical protocols prescribed by the medical administration, Ballard let his creative side take over. Even before being accepted to the residency in 2023, the photographer had begun exploring ways to illustrate the fascinating and complex environment of surgical theatres through an immersive method. That led him to develop techniques to better capture the atmosphere.
鈥淕enerally speaking, photographs of surgery give the impression that the environment is rather dark. In reality, it鈥檚 very bright. But the camera, unlike the human eye, can鈥檛 capture all the light, so I found a way of levelling out the light and capturing the whole spectrum by superimposing exposures,鈥� he explains. It鈥檚 a painstaking task that requires about thirty hours of work to create each panorama. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 exactly what brings out the beauty.鈥�
For Larose, Ballard鈥檚 work is perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the programme she created, of which the goal was to break from a clinical confine. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about giving medicine a way to look at itself that鈥檚 not just political. I want to open medicine up to its images, its symbolism, its semiotics and to the world of art.鈥�
The idea, she explains, came up during a conversation with one of her art teachers and mentors in Australia, the sculptor Rodney Glick. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 tell anyone I was a psychiatrist, but he found out. I was talking to him about how psychiatrists could use art, and then he challenged me by turning the question around and asking, 鈥楤ut what can medicine do for art?鈥欌��
When she returned to Montreal in 2006, Larose spent 10 years looking for a way to do this. She didn鈥檛 make any progress until she discovered the Osler Library of the History of Medicine.
William Osler trained and taught at 不良研究所 and, after a stint at the University of Pennsylvania, was recruited as one of four founding professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and physician-in-chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. He ended his career as Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford and it was there that he collected most of the books that formed the original Osler Library. He is remembered in part for the textbook he wrote, a classic in medical training that was translated into several languages.
As Hague-Yearl explains, Larose鈥檚 project is in perfect accordance with the wishes of Osler, whose bequest stipulated that the library should be open to students and to his French Canadian brethren. Hague-Yearl added, 鈥淲illiam Osler鈥檚 father was a missionary, serving colonial settlers in Upper Canada. His teachings emphasized the humanity of each patient. He was acutely aware of the danger of reducing patients to scientific or technical problems.鈥�
The library will carry on showing work like Ballard鈥檚. Larose and the Osler Library of the History of Medicine have just renewed their agreement for another five years. 鈥淲e are already preparing the next call for applications,鈥� says Hague-Yearl.
Ballard, meanwhile, plans to continue working on medical themes. During his frequent visits to the Osler Library, he realized that there have been virtually no artistic studies of surgery since the beginning of the 20th century. 鈥淭here is no coherent body of work, except perhaps in the United States,鈥� says Ballard.
In one of his next projects, he hopes to examine a large collection of medical photographs at Yale University. Other ideas include photographing Cuban surgeons at work and robotic surgery taking place in Japan.
鈥淪urgeons will tell you that an operating theatre is organized around common sense, but I鈥檓 struck by how much the atmosphere is about the position of bodies, almost like a choreography. And there鈥檚 no one working on it.鈥�
This article has been translated from the original French: L'art chirurgical