Back of the Book
“Still” Photography
(Part 1 of 2)
i sometimes wonder whether my interest in photography originated as a passive exposure to my
father’s relentless chronicling of our lives on the Kodachrome slides that now fill dozens of trays lining
the shelves of his bedroom closet. Over the last decade, he’s managed to scan the majority of slides,
and from time to time my parents will send a trickle of these decades-old digitized reminiscences to
my sister and me. Invariably, these archival JPEGs segue to conversations about simpler times, family
and friends whom we cherished and who have since passed, and my parents’ understandable desire
that we take a break from our harried lives to spend more quality time together.
While my career as a hematologist has offered me the opportunity for lifelong learning and the
unique privilege of caring for often desperately ill patients, past months and years have become
a blurry turnstile of evanescent relationships — patients with hematolymphoid neoplasms who
have fought the good fight and passed away, and trainees and colleagues who have entrusted our
friendship, mentorship, and collegiality, then transitioned to a life away from my home institution at
Stanford. This is not unexpected, of course, but it’s also not particularly palatable.
And this brings me back to photography. I enjoy it for some of the conventional reasons one
would expect, including my need to indulge my creative side and subdue cognitive tendencies related
to the oft-rote and algorithmic practice of medicine. ●
Monument
Valley, Utah.
Read more
from Dr. Gotlib
in our November/
December issue.
ASHClinicalNews.org
ASH Clinical News
51