Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival: A year in the life of essential workers at Sinai Health
Sinai Health is a network of hospital, research, community, and home healthcare providers. From April 1, 2016, through to March 31, 2017 Annie Tong captured a photograph a day to give us an inside look at the daily life of this important healthcare organization. This post describes the transformation of a simple Instagram project into a photography exhibition for the CONTACT Photography Festival.
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From 2010 to 2019 I had the good fortune to work as full time photographer for an important and growing healthcare organization in Toronto Canada. Sinai Health is a network of hospital, research, community, and home healthcare providers. The senior communications and marketing team encouraged me to be creative in my approach to photography, and to this day I am grateful for the creative freedom they provided me, and opportunities they helped create.
What started out as a photo a day on Instagram turned into a popular and impactful exhibition at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.
Photo of a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurse prepping an isolette bed for a baby. Photo taken through the hand openings of the isolette’s protective covering.
— Showcasing All the Essential Workers of Sinai Health —
An Instagram project that started in the spring of 2016 was originally intended to provide the existing followers of our @SinaiHealthToronto Instagram account with a more candid, behind the scenes look at the day to day life of this healthcare network. The goal was to let people see the faces of all the essential workers who dedicate themselves to helping others. By ‘essential workers’ we mean everyone: doctors and orderlies, social workers and researchers, nurses and administration staff and porters and housekeeping. The list goes on. Everyone here is essential.
Candid photo of Bridgepoint’s Environmental Services Supervisor as he shares a laugh with a co-worker while reviewing the shift schedule at the start of the day.
One year, 365 photographs. What started out as a photo a day on Instagram for Sinai Health, turned into a popular and impactful exhibition that ran as a part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto Canada. The exhibition included all 365 photographs from an entire year.
It didn’t seem to matter whether I was photographing a high profile doctor or part-time volunteer, everyone was happy to participate and be in a casual photo.
CONTACT is one of the largest photography festivals in the world and transforms buildings throughout the city into galleries for the entire month of May, every year. The 2017 exhibition celebrated a year in life of Sinai Health with 365 photos taken from April 1, 2016, through to March 31, 2017.
In the lab at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. Photograph of a researcher examining slides of stem cell lines for kidney disease research.
— Candid Photographs for Instagram Helped Everyone Feel At Ease —
The idea of taking candid photos around the hospital and its facilities actually began as something of a side gig. I was experimenting with new approaches to taking portraits of healthcare workers and support staff, trying to gauge how receptive they would be to having me photograph them while they were working, or socializing, or even just relaxing on a break. “Don’t worry,” I would say, “I’m just trying something different.”
The candid shots worked. People were more at ease being photographed this way than I expected. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was photographing a high profile doctor or part-time volunteer, everyone was happy to participate and be in a casual photo.
A long-time porter at Mount Sinai Hospital carefully navigates the hallways as he moves a bed to another floor. A porters’ role is essential to every hospital as they ensure that patients and necessary equipment are in the right place at the right time.
For the next several weeks I was taking these photos on the side whenever I didn’t have another photo shoot scheduled or post-production work that need to be done. Since the photos needed little setup time and wouldn’t take me away from my regular daily responsibilities, I considered the idea of taking one photo everyday and posting it to the Sinai Health Instagram account. The people who were already following the account would enjoy the candid look behind the scenes, and if I could keep up with daily postings of decent photographs, the number of people following the account was sure to grow.
The photos provided a whole new perspective on what goes on behind the scenes of a large healthcare organization.
Inside the Cardiac Catheterization Research Laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital as a cardiologist receives help gowning up for a procedure.
After the first month of the daily photographs being posted to Instagram, they suddenly started to feel like and actual ‘body of work’. Everyone could see it, and all of us could see that there was potential for something special. These photos provided a whole new perspective on what goes on behind the scenes of a large healthcare organization, a perspective that was less about this being a large, managed, important healthcare facility, and more about being a caring, personal, connected, trusted and loving group of devoted individuals working together as a team.
We all knew that the ‘photo a day’ idea had legs from the start, but by the time we were four months in and still going strong we all began to wonder how to turn the series into something even more.
It was decided. The project idea was working and was now given more priority. It was no longer just a side gig, but a solid project with backing and commitment. The new photographic style – candid portraits behind the scenes — had become an important approach to our visual communications and even began to influence other promotional materials and marketing collateral within the larger picture of the organization’s communication strategy.
My photographs were talked about among the staff and hospital workers, and everyone looked forward to seeing who would be in tomorrow’s photograph.
A look inside the microbiology lab at Mount Sinai Hospital while prep work is being done for Cytomegalovirus (CMV) virus testing.
— Considering the CONTACT Photography Festival as a Venue —
We all knew that the ‘photo a day’ idea had legs from the start, but by the time we were four months in and still going strong we all began to wonder how to turn the series into something even more, something we could celebrate and share outside of Instagram.
What if we could pull this off and actually be considered for an exhibition at CONTACT 2017?
I have been exhibiting my photography in the CONTACT Photography Festival since 2015. “What if…” I proposed to the team, “What if we could pull this off and actually be considered for an exhibition at CONTACT 2017?” We realized then that this ‘photo a day’ could actually become a full blown photography exhibition, and that all the essential workers and staff and orderlies and housekeeping, and everyone we photographed would have their portraits exhibited during the festival for all to see.
The submission process was set in motion. My daily photo shoots for the festival continued along side my regular photography workload for Sinai Health. In the last week of April, 2017 we installed the show at Mount Sinai Hospital on University Avenue in Toronto, and in the main lobby of Bridgepoint Active Healthcare at Broadview Avenue.
Looking out over an east Toronto neighbourhood from inside a patient room at Bridgepoint Active Healthcare. Two social workers discuss care options for a new patient.
I always felt happy and fortunate to be employed full time as a photographer at Sinai Health. I know some might think of it as a less creative photography, just like they sometimes think of in-house designers as less capable of doing great work. But I have always found that creating opportunities is often the most important of all the creative work we do. I am not going to take full credit for this one, but I do feel proud of the work, and am happy to show it to you.
The images throughout this post and included below are just a sample of the 365 photographs that were taken from April 1, 2016, through to March 31, 2017. If you would like to learn more about Sinai Health, please visit their website at SinaiHealth.ca, and you can follow them on Instagram @SinaiHealthToronto.
— Photography Gallery of the Instagram Series from the Festival —
The gallery below includes more my photographs from the Sinai Health Instagram series and CONTACT Photography Festival exhibition. — All the photographs show here area the property of Sinai Health and are not for use without permission from Sinai Health.
