Early in 2009 the hospital administrator, here on the island of Molokai where I live, called me with a request. She had a small amount of money left over from the hospital's renovation budget and wanted to know how much it would cost to buy some photos from me to brighten their walls.
Though I've made my living as a photographer for more than 35 years (first as a shooter for National Geographic, then creating advertising campaigns for some of the biggest companies in the country), I couldn't charge for my photographs in this situation. How many times had I stared at blank and soulless walls in a hospital? How many times had I felt those walls actually making me ill (or at least depressed), even while everyone there was trying hard to heal me?
'I'll give you the images for free,' I said. 'We'll spend your money simply on the cost of getting them produced.'
Eventually, I made 163 images for the hospital and put art in almost every room. It was transformative.
Then I thought, 'If it worked here on Molokai, could it work in other places?' I approached several other top flight photographers and asked if they would donate their work to such a project. The response was instant and overwhelming - 'Of course!' And right then HealingImages was born. We now have well over 4,000 images on the site and will grow our collection to include hundreds more. All these images are available as large prints simply for the cost of production.
It's been an honor and a delight to begin this project.
Ellen Vincent was a researcher at Clemson’s School of Agricultural, Forest and Environmental Sciences. She conducted a pilot project on Clemson Students to measure the amount of pain experienced when they put th...
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