Rachel Fein-Smolinski - Why Med School? or How Spinal Anesthesia acts on The Heart

$100.00

Why Med School? or How Spinal Anesthesia acts on The Heart, 2023

AIR 2020

Inkjet print on paper
8 × 10 Inches

Plate 14, from Something is Wrong, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in Volume 41, Spring 2023 of Literature and Medicine. This article and photo-comic were made for the issue of the journal on the theme of recovery, edited by Michael Blackie. Image details: fig. 42 Piece of notebook paper with “Med School Interview Questions” found on the floor of a Wegmans in Buffalo, NY
fig. 43 Drawing from Jackie Felix, my grandmother, overlayed on a photograph of a bottle of Gabapentin, an anticonvulsant used to treat chronic pain
fig. 44 Clinical photograph, Scoliosis, 1931

This print is available only from September 17th - December 7th, 2026. After this date, this image will not be made available in this format again.

Why Med School? or How Spinal Anesthesia acts on The Heart, 2023

AIR 2020

Inkjet print on paper
8 × 10 Inches

Plate 14, from Something is Wrong, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, in Volume 41, Spring 2023 of Literature and Medicine. This article and photo-comic were made for the issue of the journal on the theme of recovery, edited by Michael Blackie. Image details: fig. 42 Piece of notebook paper with “Med School Interview Questions” found on the floor of a Wegmans in Buffalo, NY
fig. 43 Drawing from Jackie Felix, my grandmother, overlayed on a photograph of a bottle of Gabapentin, an anticonvulsant used to treat chronic pain
fig. 44 Clinical photograph, Scoliosis, 1931

This print is available only from September 17th - December 7th, 2026. After this date, this image will not be made available in this format again.

Rachel Fein-Smolinski

Art and medicine are estranged siblings. Photographs are good at decontextualizing their subjects from the world that they exist in. A medical exam room is good at decontextualizing a person from the world they exist in. A person becomes a patient when their first-person experience is translated into third person narrative. When looking at medical archives, the preservation of the historical context of the experiences of patients is a vital job of archivists and researchers.
I collect and make images of the visual codices of illness and share my own archive of experiences as a chronically ill person to explore mythologies of recovery. (excerpt from article: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/50388/print)

Thoughts on the lab

I was focused on processing imagery I had collected from medical archives along with documentation of my personal and professional life with a chronic illness. Two things happened during my time at Latitude: I had to acknowledge the impact of having a disability on the speed at which I make art, because I was constantly needing to take breaks to go to physical therapy and manage medical appointments, and two, because Latitude was really good about having a board up at the entrance with a picture of my face and pronouns, it was the first time in my life that I would go full days without being misgendered and the relief that provided, the lack of need to have to come out over and over again was quite meaningful. I also had recently spent time working as The Digital Services Coordinator at Light Work in Syracuse, NY, and the opportunity to be in another lab with a similar mission but as an AIR was really helpful for me.