Educational Projects And Programs

Anatomy Of Anatomy: In Images and Words

A Photographic Exploration Of Issues Confronting First Year Medical Students During Their Rite Of Passage: The Gross Anatomy Course

Jan 28 - Feb 1, 2002

This traveling exhibition is comprised of text and photographs selected from Levin's recent book, ANATOMY OF ANATOMY (Third Rail Press, Nov. 2000). Both the book and exhibition are made possible by support from the Open Society Institute¹s, Project on Death In America. The 12-venue funded exhibition tour includes visits to Weill Medical College; Dartmouth; University of Utah; University of New Mexico; University of Texas, at Galveston; University of Massachusetts at Worcester; SUNY Stony Brook; Georgetown. New York University. UC Irvine is the 10th stop on the tour. Support from the Project on Death in America makes it possible to provide copies of the book to students at the educational centers where the exhibition is displayed.

ANATOMY OF ANATOMY takes participants on an investigation of the physical, emotional, and ethical demands medical students must address as they prepare for careers as physicians. The exhibition's twenty-two photographs, which span the four month period of the Gross Anatomy course, capture the intensity with which these students struggle to comprehend and master the volumes of knowledge related to the human body.

The installation juxtaposes photographs of the students with excerpts from their journals, revealing their personal progression from initial apprehension, to discovery, to ethical questioning, and, finally, to a remarkable respect and appreciation - both for the process they have completed and for the generosity of those who willed their bodies to medical education.

The book has a forward by author and physician Abraham Verghese, Grover E. Murray Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Texas Tech University in El Paso. In recounting his own study as a student so many years before, he says, "I struggle to this day to find words for that seminal year, for the way it marked my transition into this life of a clinician, and the way it has shaped my world view. Indeed, words alone cannot do it, cannot quite do justice to that year. And that is why these remarkable photographs, and the accompanying written thoughts of students going through the same rite are so powerful."

Meryl Levin, a New York City based photojournalist, is a 1988 graduate of New York University¹s Tisch School of the Arts. Over the past decade, she has focused her camera primarily on issues of health and social welfare. During that period, she came to understand medical care from the patient¹s point of view. With ANATOMY OF ANATOMY, her first book, Levin explores a long-standing curiosity about "the other side" the making of a physician. Levin received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1994, and the Fellowship from the Open Society Institute¹s, Project on Death in America, in 2000 and again in 2001. Levin¹s photographs have been published worldwide and she continues to work on long-term, documentary projects in the United States and abroad.

Following the slide show and narration, a panel discussion explored various aspects of the anatomy experience. Participants included Robert Leonard, Ph.D., director of the gross anatomy course; Felicia Cohn, Ph.D., medical ethicist; Marianne Ross, Ph.D., psychologist; Miles Coolidge, MFA, professor of art; two first year students (Eric Hegedus and Susan Hodes); and two second year students (Kenneth Weinstock and Sunjya Schweig).

Meryl Levin may be contacted at mlevin@igc.org.

Third Rail Press, publisher of the book Anatomy of Anatomy,
may be contacted at:

Third Rail Press
PO Box 356
New York, NY 10276
(917)747-3243
info@thirdrailpress.org
www.thirdrailpress.org