It’s been some time since Viet Duc, but the murky vignettes of broken needles on a dirty floor and doctors conducting open surgery without gloves still haunt me to this day through my photographs. When I was a beginning photographer, I volunteered for American Veteran Dr. Dan Berliner and documented the Viet Duc ICU in Hanoi, Vietnam – and the experience was, well, humbling and shocking for someone from a developed country. In this photograph, a father scales a wall to have a glimpse of his toddler son who is confined to the muggy hospital bed by a brace wrapped around his injured private area. Visitors were not allowed.
This picture is so heartbreaking and mesmerizing at the same time. I can’t help feeling so much sympathy for the father who desperately wants to see how his child is doing. I hope he was okay.