Category: Doctor’s Office

Guest Post – UCLA Health

Doctor's Office, Guest Photo
marty
UCLA Health. April 2016 ©2016 Marty Mullin

I received this photo in my email today from a friend. A talented Director of Photography I have known for years. It speaks for itself. I didn’t convert into black and white because I love the 70’s avocado green of the couch. He didn’t send any other information along with the picture.

It has always been my hope that others begin to participate in the Waiting Room Project, that’s why I call it a project – an ongoing documentation of these ‘non-places’ and by extension, the documentation of our lives.

Thank you Marty, you are the very first guest poster. I have had others send me photos and I will scour my emails to find them and share.

Dr. Bob

Doctor's Office
Waiting_select_228
Chiropractor, Los Angeles. November 2014

I have been to many chiropractors over the years. The best was Dr. Lowell Cripe, more than 30 years ago. He was a huge bear of a man with the most gentle hands. He would touch your spine with eyes closed, feeling for any out of place vertebrae. Then he would wrap you up and … crack, you were miraculously straightened. He was a true healer. Sadly, he passed away and his partner took over the practice. Dr. B__ wasn’t nearly as good and we moved on.

Chiropractors came and went, some effective, some less so. Several years ago, we found Dr. Bob in Santa Monica. He is also a healer, and big enough to apply sufficient torque to my stiff and reluctant spine to move it. Dr. Bob was struck by lightning a few years ago while on the beach, and initially was pronounced dead. His daughter brought him back to life with CPR, and after several  months recuperation, he was back at work. He favors Hawaiian shirts (as do I) and usually can put me back together.

His waiting room has the usual assortment of magazines along with several Gary Larsen books and a few other publications of similarly twisted humor. It makes the short wait go by quickly. Fortunately, I haven’t had to visit Dr. Bob for many months.

 

Before the Beginning

Doctor's Office, Waiting for Jake
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USC Medical Center, Downtown LA. June 14, 2012 9:16 AM

I was going through the photos and came across this one I had forgotten about. It actually pre-dates the entire Project by almost a year. I had just acquired the Hipstamatic application and was playing around with it while we waited for Jake to have one of the very first evaluations of his back issues. This is with one of the double exposure ‘paks’ the original Hipstamatic offered in addition to the basic kit – the Salvador lens and Dream Canvas film. It was a one-off, in that I didn’t really pursue the idea of “waiting” nor did I start to photograph the spaces in earnest until the following year. Kinda of like asking what was the universe like before the big bang. Well, here is a glimpse. So you could say the seeds for the Project were planted on this day, but would lie dormant for 9 months only to burst into bloom the following spring. Poetic, huh?

A Symmetry of Chairs

Doctor's Office, Waiting for Jake
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Doctor’s Office, Pacific Palisades. May 2013

This is the waiting room of the doctor who Jake was seeing, down the hall from the previous post. Aside from my new-found preoccupation with waiting rooms, the absolute symmetry of this room demanded a photo. Since I was the only one in the room, I had the luxury of taking several pictures until I achieved the perfect framing. The room was brightly lit and the chairs were uncomfortable. I guess this doctor had better time management so his patients wouldn’t have to wait too long. Good thing. They were so uncomfortable, I got up and wandered the halls discovering the photo in the previous post. They could go as a set, I suppose.

Pediatrician’s Office

Doctor's Office, Waiting for Jake
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Doctor’s Office, Pacific Palisades. May 2013

Waiting with children poses unique challenges. As a rule, they don’t really want to wait for anything; their mantra is usually ‘now’. Most certainly they don’t want to wait for the doctor who may poke them and prod them, put a flat piece of wood in their mouths and make them say “aaahh”, or even worse, stick them with a sharp needle. This well-mannered office provides a child-sized table with some reading material and some games to keep the kiddies occupied. While Jake was in with a new doctor in the office down the hall, I kept myself busy checking out all the other offices in the building. This one was right next door, and seemed worthy of a photo.

The Open Door

Doctor's Office, People Waiting
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Surgery Center, Santa Monica. June 2013

By now, I was on the lookout for waiting rooms, waiting benches, waiting stools, waiting lines, any place that had been designated, however vaguely, as a “waiting area”, my iPhone at the ready. I had it pre-set to one of the black and white combinations that I was using. Often these photos were taken surreptitiously, no more than a quick glance at the screen and a touch of the shutter button. Many times I would only take one photo. Sometimes I had the luxury of several, choosing the best when I had the leisure to look at them on the large screen of my computer. After my initial appointment with the oral surgeon of the last post, I was walking down the hallway toward the elevator when I passed this doorway and was immediately captivated by the image. I wondered what the woman was doing. Was she talking to someone? Was she getting something out of her purse on the chair next to her?  Was she a patient or was she waiting for someone else? As I didn’t want to be discovered taking pictures, I snapped this one photo; I didn’t linger to peer in to answer the questions. I preferred to leave them unanswered to be asked and answered by the viewer.

The Whole Tooth

Doctor's Office, People Waiting

 

Dentist Office, Santa Monica. June 2013
Oral Surgeon, Santa Monica. June 2013

In June, we celebrated my wife’s birthday at a very upscale restaurant in Santa Monica with my mother and Jake. At the beginning of the meal, I bit into a piece of olive bread and a pit hidden inside cracked one of my teeth. It was the beginning of a two-year adventure attempting to get compensation for the damage, a story for another time. The very next day, I visited my dentist (the photo on the left) for an evaluation, and waited in one of those chairs. He determined that the damage was so extensive I needed the tooth extracted and an implant put in. He referred me to an oral surgeon (the photo on the right) and I had the surgery a few days later.  Six months later I had a titanium insert screwed into my jaw and a shiny new crown. Note how many more patients the surgeon anticipates than the dentist. This is one of the first pictures that has another person in the shot. I also took a photo of the empty room, and the presence of the person lends a different import, so I amended my “rules” to include rooms occupied and unoccupied.

USC in Beverly Hills

Doctor's Office, Waiting for Jake
USC Medical Office, Beverly Hills. March 2013
USC Medical Office, Beverly Hills. May 2013

This is the waiting room of the doctor who performed the spinal injections for Jake. The actual procedure happened at the downtown hospital, but we went to visit the doc here in the fashionable USC medical building on Wilshire in Beverly Hills. Or rather on the edge of Los Angeles that abuts Beverly Hills. Two views of the same office, one looking east one looking west. The left-hand photo is the east view, with the large window on the right. It was part of the group of the first photos as I was finding my way with the concept. I particularly liked the light and the ‘living room’ feel of this area. The frosted glass door in the right-hand west view photo led into the offices proper. What was unusual is that every time we visited there was never anyone else in the waiting room.

 

Back to UCLA

Doctor's Office, Waiting for Jake
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UCLA Medical Office, Santa Monica. May 2013

This is the waiting room at the UCLA Santa Monica medical center pictured in the 12 Chairs post. This room was so large, it had 4 or 5 different areas with different decors and furnishings in the same room. There was something about the shapes and arrangement of these chairs that inspired me to shoot a second photo of the same room two months apart. There was an area with a coffee and tea maker, microwave oven, and a soda machine; I guess the powers that be at UCLA knew you might have to camp out for a while when they set up the  room. At other times when we visited, there were families with children picnicking at the tables, people working on computers, doing their homework, a regular mecca of activity. This was in the “empty room” phase so I had to work to get a picture without people. We would visit a few more times before Jake decided to abandon the UCLA system in favor of USC. As a former Bruin UES elementary student, I was aghast, but he preferred the doctor.