Vancouver physician documents colleagues’ 'double lives' in powerful portraits

Dr. Cyrus McEachern is a Vancouver-based anesthesiologist whose split-frame portraits of colleagues at work and at home are attracting attention from major news outlets.

"The first few weeks of COVID arriving at our hospital, Vancouver General, I personally was quite stressed, as were many of my colleagues, and we were finding that it had permeated into our personal lives," McEachern told CBC. He was inspired by Turkish photographer Uğur ​​​​​​Gallenkuş, who is known for his contrasting double-frame portraits, to find a visual representation of this burden. In McEachern's portraits he splices together photos of health care workers at work, with others of them doing what they love outside of work, from spending time with family to snowboarding and doing yoga.

"It's hard for me to speak for all of my colleagues, but people have found it, I think, validating in terms of kind of expressing the burden they carry home with them when they leave work," he said. The photos also serve as a powerful reminder of "just how beautiful our lives are when we're not stressed to the max with this global pandemic."

Source: CBC