Exhibition The Time of Cure, by Emilia Brandão
Until March 2020, the Brazilian Emilia Brandao she photographed soccer players, actors and musicians for different publications in Europe and South America specialized in what we know as "lifestyle". But that "lifestyle" changed us all (Europe, South America and the rest of the planet) overnight, and she "who had never had that photojournalistic streak" tapped her on the shoulder pointing her in a direction that had never taken.
The Leica Room in Madrid exhibits the project of the Brazilian Emilia Brandâo
She had recently settled with her family in Madrid, an old and beloved acquaintance where she had lived for years and who she considers her second home. But, this time, the one that she received him it was not the Madrid with which she had fallen in love , noisy, chaotic, lively and sometimes exasperating, but a very different city. A closed to lime and song , threatened and powerless, sad and scared that she lived 24 hours with goosebumps and a heavy heart.
That sleepy city and that unique and historic moment led him to a "process of deep introspection", "from waking up a side that she had asleep", to realizing that "we are all interconnected with our actions" and starting a quest to discover what she was " what the virus wanted to teach us".
"They made me want to do something for others, and since the only thing I know how to do are portraits, I wanted to applaud them and appreciate everything that the health personnel was doing for us," explains Brandão.
The sadness of the pediatrician
From the ambulance driver to the pneumologist, from guards to surgeons, from the ICU cleaner to the doctor they interview on television , all were summoned for four days between the months of April and May, when the pandemic in Spain was at its peak in three large hospitals in Madrid (Puerta del Hierro University Hospital, Gregorio Marañón Hospital and Southeast University Hospital), in their few moments of rest between his very long shifts to sit in front of his camera.
Some exploded, others collapsed, were speechless, or told Emilia something they hadn't dared to share with anyone else.
The healing time is the result of a selection of that job: 150 stories, 150 people who fought on the front lines against the virus, who were passing, one by one, through an improvised studio to be photographed, wrapped, not with a cape of superheroes as we insisted on seeing them, but in a layer of fear, impotence and social service: of humanity.
One of Emilia Brandâo's portraits.
Pain, frustration, tiredness, sleepiness, despair... which translate into puffy circles under the eyes, unattended gray hair, lost looks or tears, and which have been recorded in the form of these beautiful and powerful black and white images, witnesses of a time that we would like to forget and a work that we will never forget as a tribute to this entire healthcare group, which today receives the 2020 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord in Oviedo.
Paradoxically, mother of two small children and an asthmatic husband, at a time when even less was known about how it spread, Emilia had the feeling that "something" was protecting her: "I was working for the virus, I knew it was a duty And that's why I was calm."
Exhibition The Time of Cure, by Emilia Brandão
Walking in front of the selection that she composes into a story, and remembering each one of the moments in which she made them, Emilia cannot control her emotion, nor can Jose Felix Hoyo , president of Doctors of the World, an NGO actively involved in supporting Spanish hospitals during the pandemic, nor doctor Jesus Millan , head of Internal Medicine at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid (and one of the subjects), who were present at the presentation of the exhibition at the Leica Gallery from Madrid, where they will be until November 12.
Possibly The healing time she continues traveling to other destinations, still uncertain. Like everyone's. Meanwhile, Emilia continues with the camera in hand, willing to remain committed to the project, "shooting" wherever it is needed.