I was dead

by Dominique Conil,
Writer/ journalist
 
“January 6, 2007. 7:00 PM. My motorcycle slides under a truck on the beltway just outside Paris. The SMUR team arrives. For many hours I am lying on the road. It is raining hard.” An accident, it could happen to anyone, banal. Between the work undertaken by the Emergency and Resuscitation Medical Service, a sort of hospital in a van (under the French acronym SMUR), the hours spent waiting, the fear, the morphine, the refrain of “Sir, sir, wake up, talk to me,” and finally waking up in the hospital, the sleepless nights, empty. Perhaps it was a way to retrace these lost hours that the photographer Grégoire Korganow, well-known, in the public eye, normally a very busy man -- spent a year following the medical team from the hospital in Gonesse. Wearing a white coat, responding to calls, between MVAs (motor vehicle accidents), fights, reclusive old women helpless at home, heart attacks, bringing with him a single, discreet camera.
 
The result, this book J'étais mort, is extremely powerful. No ‘spectacular’ photos, this is not medical voyeurism. It is about exploring that which we all fear: death, of course, but more the idea of dying alone, being intubated, the nude bodies in the hands of strangers, the disenfranchisment of the self, the indignity of a body which has turned into a technical, medical object. “This is not a book you give as a gift,” someone says. Yet maybe it is, because what Korganow shows us is a battle, with its occasional defeats. Yes there are images of housing projects lit up like camps, crumpled cars on a highway at dawn, a fold in a sheet on an empty hospital bed, the gloomy hospital stairways. The effect is paradoxical -- a hospital as a collective space, ugly, naked -- here we find much more humanity than in other places, rendering the building almost pleasant. We see faces, bodies. Those who are being treated --we see few faces, which we cannot identify, nor can we see who is doing the treatments. The miracle is there, the medical gestures are kind, tender, the bodies covered and wrapped, hoping against hope for stabilization, until they “lose” the patient, that’s the term they use. The faces are weathered, exhausted, but with an overriding kindness, their gaze exceedingly present, examining a barely visible, gaunt face. The team is tight-knit, five young, vigorous backs bent over a patient; there’s the young fireman staring out into the night under an over‑ornate chandelier, a kneeling female doctor pleading with a seated man, the team running down the hall carrying a stretcher. A devotion, tension, close attention paid to the sick person, since his or her life may well depend on it. It is during these moments where we see how far medical technology has come that empathy becomes even more essential. We have rarely seen such an homage to the profession. Photographers caption their work, but do not generally add a lot of text; here, Korganow has written texts, short, not too much. Short scenes, often interrupted by the departure of the ambulance, very precise, concise, dialogue captured from the doctors whom we know only by their first names. Texts which remind us of the difficulty of finding a place for a person, calling here and there with someone dying in the back of the van: France, 2008, Gonesse. A short preface is proposed by Jean-Luc Sebbah, director of the emergency department at the hospital in Gonesse, explaining why, having declined all previous requests by reporters -- he accepted Grégoire Korganow’s request. He showed up saying, “I want to put faces to the people, the hands touching me, the voices I heard, who saved my life when I had my accident ...” You can tell he is not just any director. In any case, he was right; as in other successful work, this book which traces the painful framing of our lives is in fact quite refreshing, inspirational even.
 
Dominique Conil,
Review broadcast on Club Médiapart, February 22, 2011
Writer/ journalist. Books: Our Justice, Flammarion (investigation/ essay), Waiting for the war (Actes Sud), An occupied girl (Actes Sud), Anna Politkovskaya, saying no to fear (Actes sud junior, May 2012)