I was researching articles about facial
reconstructive surgery. I came across a recent report about the work of Doctors
Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), in a hospital in Amman, Jordan
(1).
It is not a new topic for any war zone yet I was compelled to read because
of one paragraph:
“The
mission of this one-of-a-kind hospital, funded and run by MSF, is to rebuild
the identities of patients, most of whom are forced to confront their trauma
every time they see their reflection.”
Rebuilding identity. Most of us search for our
identity not because we lost it but because we never found it. We go back to identify ancestry, history and
life experiences. If lucky, we just build our identity based on the inherited.
Rebuilding is totally different. It has nothing to
do with the past, but all about the type of future one can now construct. And this time it is an identity that we let
others, like surgeons, decide what it will be.
I remember a saying about mirrors:
“Mirrors should reflect twice before sending our
image back to us.”
…. For some reason I then looked for a picture I
took last year but left it in the drawer. I was looking at the bronze sculpture
of an unknown woman in a corner of a museum yard. It was perhaps a famous woman
once, but now frozen in bronze and left in that corner. Even with a small plate
about the artist, she had no identity.
Then, as I like for most of my street photography
moments, a woman peeped into the yard from behind the iron fence. Her hair was
very similar to that of the unknown, bronze face that was facing me.
For a
split second I thought about identity and being “imprisoned” behind the bars of
ancestry, history or life experiences.
So I clicked because that is what I do when I have
my camera hanging from my neck.
May 4, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016
(1) “Plastic Surgeons Treat Physical And Psychological
Wounds In The Middle East” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/plastic-surgery-jordan-hospital_us_56e9ab9fe4b0b25c91843d60
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