Photo by Marijke Thoen
FROM THE FOUNDER
We are all living organisms, universally fragile and vulnerable.
Everybody, and every body, is interconnected.
It takes only a split second for a life to be disrupted and altered in perpetuity by illness, injury, disease, disability, or death.
Despite modern methodologies aspiring to predict health conditions, health status, and health outcomes, none are absolute. Artificial Intelligence, data analysis, social demographics, algorithms, policy analysts, behavioral scientists, quants, and physicians cannot predict health.
Health and healthcare—the very cornerstones of economic dignity—are essential to unharnessing human potential to its fullest. This multidisciplinary exhibition examines the ethics, people, processes, and systems that constitute the maintenance of, and barriers to, health for human beings.
What does economic dignity mean? It means self-worth, clean housing, access to economic capital, education, a healthy environment, strong supportive social networks, safe public spaces, and positive social structures.
The photographs, art, and essays in this exhibition reveal what it is to be fully human—birth, adolescence, parenthood, family, compassion, athleticism, friendship, conflict, strife, mental illness, harm, survival, illness, injury, empathy, intimacy, disability, overcoming physical limitations, End of Life, and love.
As a group of dedicated photographers, artists, essayists, and physicians, we strive through our work every day toward educated, safe, equitable, just and healthful societies internationally.
What we know is access to quality healthcare benefits society.
What we know is prioritizing public health reduces violence and trauma.
What we know is affordable, accessible healthcare strengthens economies worldwide by leveraging human potential to the fullest.
And, we all know that carrying loved ones and strangers alike through life’s unexpected trials stabilizes communities globally.
This multiverse project provokes us to ask seminal questions of ourselves and also of our business and government leaders. How can we—every person, every professional, every industry—include comprehensive health as a priority in our bylaws, our business practices, and our policies? How can we ensure health is first and foremost in our daily decision making?
The electorate, business owners, civic leaders, families, patients, healthcare workers, and community organizers are changing their approach to governance and leadership by making comprehensive health, best practice, and compassion a priority.
A very promising trend is in our midst: The realization—perhaps a global revelation—that we are all undeniably interconnected.
— Kimberly J. Soenen
Executive Producer | Creative Director | Curator
“SOME PEOPLE”