Photographing Hospitalization

This week, Hillel Yaffe Medical Center inaugurated a photography exhibition which is entirely the result of photography by children hospitalized in the hospital’s Pediatric Department in the past year. The project was led by Dror Katz, a photography teacher engaged in the field of phototherapy, under the umbrella of the active Educational Center of the Hillel Yaffe Medical Center’s Pediatric Department, which is managed by Ofra Abergil.

In this project, children hospitalized in the department received a stills camera, and after an explanation and learning the theory of photography and observation, they photographed various objects in the inpatient environment. Visitors and patients can encounter the results of the project in the hospital hallways, under the title What We See From Here, after the inauguration ceremony that took place last week in the presence of the medical center administration, the department administration and staff, the Educational Center staff and others.

The photographs in the exhibition are of various objects in the department and inpatient environment, photographed from a different perspective that challenges the photograph viewers to guess what was photographed. To make it easier, the answer is attached in the upper part of the photograph as a QR code to be scanned by the viewers.

The children’s exhibition at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center - Scan to understand what was photographed

“It was amazing to see the children working on the project discovering a new world of observation”, said Dror Katz, “photography with ‘ordinary’ cameras and not cellphone cameras allowed them a different kind of investigation, and the results are spectacular.”

Pediatric Division Director, Dr. Adi Klein: “The activity of the Educational Center as part of the department allows children an important break that often assists in relieving the hospitalization and illness experience that can be complex physically and emotionally - for the child and the parents.”

It should be noted that in the department’s Educational Center, children perform various educational activities for hospitalized children that allow them to have special investigative and learning experiences suitable for the hospitalization period. The Educational Center provides optimal educational and therapeutic services by a multidisciplinary team on behalf of the Ministry of Education.