Artist reception to be held Friday, March 7
In 2006, New Mexico journalist and photographer Sharon Niederman traveled with University of New Mexico School of Medicine professor Dr. Dale Alverson and UNM medical students to Ecuador to study that country's rural health program. In Ecuador, where many communities rarely see a physician, new physicians are required to participate in a year-long rural residency program that brings them to the most remote parts of the country.
“The Path with Heart: Healing Images and Journal Accounts from Ecuador” contains Niederman's photographs and journals from the trip and will be on display at the University of New Mexico Hospital's Health Sciences Gallery from March 7 to May 9, 2008. The public artist's reception will be held Friday, March 7, from 4 to 6 p.m. Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public.
The month-long trip provided Niederman and her colleagues ample opportunity to view the disparities between US and Ecuadorean medical communities. “In the rainforest areas we visited, medical care was rarely available. As important as trained medical staff are to the people we met, I witnessed that most of the illness of the jungle, of that vast 'Third World,' could easily be cured with fresh water, proper sanitation and more protein. There is nothing exotic about it,” says Niederman.
Niederman will show 40 images from the trip, shot on a SLR digital Nikon D-50, with few exceptions using natural light and printed on Kodak Royal Digital or Fuji Crystal Archive paper.
The photographs were shot in Quito, Nuevo Rocafuerte in Ecuador’s Oriente jungle region near the Peruvian border, and in the Andean region of Zimbabua. Nuevo Rocafuerte may be reached only by a 12 hour boat ride along the Rio Napo, one of the Amazon’s three major tributaries. There the UNM team was hosted by the doctors, nurses, priests and sisters who were responsible for the work of a small hospital.
“I was privileged to witness a dedication to service, and the dignity with which it is received, that opened my heart to hope for us all,” says Niederman. “It is these precious moments of joy and connection, generated within poverty, heat, rain, mud and disease, that I am driven to share through these images.”
Media Contact: Sophie Martin, (505) 710-9325; e-mail: sophie_martin@earthlink.net
Posted by scarr at February 29, 2008 12:10 PM