fotoplay: made in the hospital

One week ago I wrote about donating five Fotoplay books to the hospital emergency room in my town, and today, as planned, I went back to take a look at the books, to see if kids had completed any pages. To say they had would be an understatement. There are so many pages for me to share that this will be the first of at least three posts about this collection of work created (mostly anonymously, unsigned) at the children’s table of the ER.

In considering all of the pages, it’s impossible for me to not dwell this idea: The kids had to have known that they would be leaving this work behind, so it seems to me that the spirit in which they were working might be akin to that of a graffiti artist.

They were tagging the books. They were leaving their marks in a public place, and this must have been a thrilling invitation.

When looking at some of the pages, it seems that it may have also been liberating, maybe even cathartic.

There is of course the overarching reality of waiting in an emergency room, which is no small thing. I have no way of knowing about the nature of any of the emergencies that the creators of these pages were either witnessing or experiencing…

So is it a stretch to say that there might be a relationship between blood (and pain and possibly violence), and the deliberate use of the color red on so many of the pages?

The page below is obviously the same page, but from a different copy of the book.

Not all of the pages evoked violence or fear, but still, the prevalent use of red was striking…

and creepy…

After seeing the collection of drawings above, it was actually strange to come upon the drawing below. Suddenly I too remembered that the hospital is a place where doctors and nurses are trained to help us heal, and that our bodies are designed to be strong and healthy, alive with a beating heart.

Sitting at the children’s table in the hospital ER, looking at page after page of these intriguing drawings was fascinating. It made me think about how environment and circumstance really seep (or flood) in to the images that we make. And it made me want to leave Fotoplay books and magic markers all over the place, in bus stops, churches, police stations, on trains…