I am currently preparing to embark on a trip to Bucharest, Romania, with a Fulbright Scholarship I was recently awarded in photography. My trip to Romania is a follow-up to a 2002 trip I made with Gift of Life International's “Flight for Life,” a volunteer team of United States cardiac specialists, doctors and nurses, using the latest in surgical procedures and recovery care techniques. Surgery began on May 7, 2002, and continued for multiple days at The Institute of Cardiovascular Disease at the Fundeni Clinical Hospital in Bucharest. The goal was to help save babies and children in Romania with the most serious and complicated heart defects, who would have died without immediate treatment
I will travel back to Romania to create a photo essay of Fundeni Hospital patients who have undergone heart surgery. I will illustrate how the lives of the Romanian children and families have changed as a result of the procedures. My completed project will tell stories through pictures about Romania, its medicine, and its people at a very personal level to an audience back in the United States. The medium of photography is ideal in that the pictures and people they portray transcend linguistic and cultural barriers.
Here are some images from my previous trip to Romania:
