1977 (negative); 1983 (print)

Untitled

American, born 1948

Both a practicing doctor and a visual artist, Avery makes work that grapples with the liminal space between art and medicine. This photograph is part of a series called Hands Healing, in which he used the camera to document the hands of a surgeon, an attending physician, and a resident during a ten-hour Pennsylvania State College of Medicine surgical procedure to reattach a severed hand. In so doing, Avery’s series shuttles between an objective, medical gaze and an awareness of a long history of images of spiritual and physical healing.