Behind The Scenes - A Documentary Project

Behind The Scenes - A Documentary Project Jeremy Webb


	The frantic activity of a busy kitchen made for some interesting action shots as heavy trays of steaming vegetables are hauled into position before the meals are served up and taken off to the wards.

This feature is intended to provide a condensed account of a commission to photograph a documentary project which was exhibited on the corridor walls of my local NHS Trust Hospital.

The commission itself was initiated by the Hospital Arts Project - a small, independent group of very dedicated arts workers who commission art projects to enhance the often sterile and unwelcoming environment of a modern hospital with thought-provoking and stimulating exhibitions and projects. Although they are based within the Norfolk & Norwich NHS Trust, they have a healthy independence in terms of what they can initiate and achieve within their remit.


Once instruments have been cleaned and sterilized some are inspected closely by human hand and eye before being returned or re-packaged for further use.

My first contact with them was when I bid for an advertised commission to produce a documentary photography project and then had to submit myself to scrutiny at an interview. Here I discussed my ideas at greater length and justified the budgets for my fee and materials I had set out in my written proposals. The theme of the exhibition 'Behind The Scenes' had been agreed prior to the interview, so what I felt they were looking for (apart from a technically and artistically competent photographer) was a resourceful person, experienced with people and used to dealing with a variety of potentially tricky situations - and believe me, this last one came in useful. The photography would focus on the working lives of men and women at 3 Trust Hospitals (Norfolk & Norwich, West Norwich, and Cromer), those who work literally 'behind the scenes' in support services such as catering, sterilising, maintenance, security, and so on. Just about everybody then, except doctors, nurses, and patients.


	Here I was fascinated by the way in which catering instruments took on the appearance of medical instruments. This chef was absorbed in accurately checking the temperature of the prepared food, and yet he appeared to be ready to inject it with some hypodermic neadle.

First priority after signing the contract and buying the film was (as usual) organising my time. The Hospital Arts Co-ordinator had drawn-up a list of the various departments willing to take part in the project and each co-operating department had a couple of key individuals who were contactable via the internal switchboard. Since the commission allowed for 6 full days of photography, I had to work out where I should be, and for how long. Some areas of the hospital would have far more picture potential than others and I was already having to make assumptions about which departments would offer-up better pictures than others whilst trying to convey a fair and accurate overall picture of the trusts support services in their entirety.


Again, the surrounding hot plate and yellow gloves signify that this is a catering environment and yet the scene could almost be an operating theatre with a surgeons gloved hands holding a precious organ.

A rare opportunity to use flash here, attempting to penetrate the clouds of steam emanating from this huge vat of potatoes.

Sometimes I had to shadow porters as they went about their business up and down the hospital corridors.

This balancing act remained the most difficult aspect of this commission to grapple with, and it was put to me on several occasions that certain individuals were most displeased by my non-attendance at their work space, simply because time and resources didn't allow. I had to stay focussed on what I could do rather than what I couldn't, and I was not there to flatter the egos of demanding people, but to record the working lives of the support staff even though I had to make impossible judgements at times, as a necessary compromise required to get the job done.

The other challenges at this early stage of organisation were also concerned with the P Factor - People - Reluctant People (now refusing to be photographed at work), Exhibitionists (now demanding to be photographed), and Invisible People who could not be found anywhere. It takes all sorts to make a world, and a busy hospital is no different. The departments to be visited across 3 different hospitals within 6 days consisted of the following:

Security
Porters
Post Room
Switchboard
Site Services & Accommodation
Supplies & Stores
Medical Records
Catering
Gardeners
Sewing Room
Cleaners
Maintenance (inc. electricians, plumbers, carpenters, engineers etc)
Clinical Sterilising

The 6 days photography were not consecutive but each full day 'on the job' was followed by 2/3 days off before the next one. This was really down to other peoples availability but was in fact very useful since it allowed me time out to take stock, process and edit film, organise other work, and generally keep a bit of distance from what was becoming a highly-absorbing project. Once the final permissions were given, and an ID badge issued, I was on my way, deep into the bowels of the service corridors and into a labyrinth of rarely-seen departments. Away from the wards and the public areas of the hospital, there exists a whole army of people all working hard to make the whole thing tick over as smoothly as possible.

Each department had its own set of challenges and hurdles to overcome. Rather than a discussion of the commission chronologically, I'll give you a flavour of three of the departments I visited and discuss briefly the environmental and technical issues I encountered there.


	An unusual angle and focussing on the details of a busy office environment can say so much more than the bigger picture.

	One of the engineering staff tests for acidity in a test tube sample in the boiler room.

	In small spaces with low light, I was able to use fast film and a wide angle lens to take a portrait of this hospital security guard.

Clinical Sterilising

Definately in at the deep end here. This is where all the gruesome tools and equipment used in the operating theatres ends up, ready to be washed and sterilised. As one happy worker put it - 'this is where all the mince gets washed-up' and there was certainly a lot of gristle and bone about, requiring a strong stomach from any visitor to the department.

As with all of the areas I visited, I wanted to get shots of people just doing what they do, not grinning into the camera in a posed or artificial way. Without exception, each department was tightly bound together in a bond which bolstered and supported its members - plenty of laughs but a lot of hard graft too. A total stranger arrives with cameras round his neck and this single, unfamiliar element changes the whole dynamic of the space. At first I'd be stared at, people would look nervously or suspiciously at me even though their department chiefs had told their staff that I would be arriving.

I had to win peoples confidence immediately in order to get any success in such a short time at each department. This meant suppressing any shyness on my part and giving as good as I got. I was the butt of all the jokes and had to take it on the chin - it was all very cheerful and well-meant but I had a job to do so I'd chat to a small group well within earshot of the others if possible, and remind them why I was here, share a quick joke and then withdraw almost immediately into the background. Once people realised that they were simply to ignore me, I managed to drift into spaces quite close to my subjects or hover over their shoulder and work away discreetly. After ten minutes or so, things relaxed considerably, but it is a tricky skill to acquire - to go in to an unfamiliar situation like this with confidence and swagger, then to withdraw discreetly and quietly observe the goings-on as Mr Invisible.

Catering

The big problem here was steam - heaps of it, pouring out from the massive kitchen pots into the air, sliding down the walls, and dripping onto the floor. Technically this made photography fairly tricky when things really got going at about 11.00am when preparation for the delivery of meals up into the wards began in earnest. I had to watch my back constantly for caterers wheeling great trollies of food around, and came close to slipping in the wet floors on several occasions. Like many of the departments I visited there was a mixture of different types of lighting, from daylight, to tungsten spots, to fluorescent tubes.

I tried to use available light wherever possible to capture the reality of the situation without resorting to flash. This made for some interesting images which often showed subject blur but which captured the sense of action, hustle & bustle, and general fevered activity which just wouldn't be possible with flash photography. Aside from anything else, working away in the background is much easier without a bright burst of flash blowing your cover every time you fire the shutter.


This was a grabbed shot and although I attempted to remain invisible and let life go in infront of me, sometimes the space was too small or the joke too funny to ignore.

A self defence training sesson for hospital staff provided some opportunities here to get in close and use a slow shutter speed with flash.

The Post Room

For such a huge hospital, this was a very small space where all the incoming and outgoing mail is filtered and sorted by a team of what seemed to be only 6 or 7 people. I wanted to avoid the obvious shots here (as the space was so small) of men hurling letters and parcels into sacks. Everyone here was laughing and joking away and I ended-up grabbing a shot of the lively working atmosphere rather than the work itself.

...The Final Stages

Once all the visits to the various departments were complete, I had to sort through each film and prepare 28 prints for enlargement as 20' x 16' mounted prints. The budget negotiated with the Hospital Arts Project included enough funds for 'Jumbo' contact sheets on 12' x 16' paper (a very useful service from my local professional processing lab) which was a big help once it came to editing my work.

Mounting was taken out of my hands thanks to the Medical Illustration department of the hospital who presented my prints very professionally behind wall-mounted glass cabinets in a brightly-lit corridor in Outpatients.

And there it stayed, for well over a year. Not only did it have a morale-boosting effect on the staff there, but it gave my business plenty of local advertising and many spin-off opportunities and commissions came my way as a result of it. As with many similar commissions of this type, its easy to be glib about your role as a photographer in an alien environment where life is observed as if through a microscope and the scurrying activities of the worker ants are scrutinized voyeuristically by your all-seeing eye. The reality is that I was an outsider, in a privileged position and the time I spent there was merely a fraction of a second compared to the working lives of the men and women at the hospital. A humbling experience indeed - even the title of the exhibition seemed too self-important - not so much a View Behind The Scenes, more like a Quick Peek Behind The Curtain