How Ebola Healthcare Workers Get Dressed




Glenna Gordon‘s revealing portraits of African healthcare workers suiting up to combat Ebola are more than instructional. They are touching. By showing us the brave men and women beneath all that protective gear, she’s humanized the people risking their lives under trying conditions so others might live.


The photos, taken in Liberia and Sierra Leone, show the laborious process of donning the suits that must be worn while tending to the sick, the dying and the dead. Seeing volunteers add one layer of protection after another until only their eyes are visible underscores the risk they are taking. And by starting each series with a portrait of the person wearing only hospital scrubs, Gordon literally puts a face to the bravery.


“I think sometimes we become desensitized to stories like this,” the photographer says. “If you’ve seen one person in a hazmat suit, it’s like you’ve you seen 10. I wanted to make sure we remembered these are normal people who are volunteering to help. No one is being forced to go.”


Gordon spent September and early October in western Africa for the The Wall Street Journal . Her main assignment was photographing clinics and following burial teams, but it wasn’t long before she started shooting these portraits. Each photo in her series documents a step in the suiting up process. Workers start with gloves, then don Tyvek suits, boots, masks, eye protection, aprons, and another pair of gloves.


According to the World Health Organization, there have been 13,703 cases of Ebola and 4,920 deaths worldwide. Sierra Leone and Liberia have been hit hardest. Those fighting the epidemic have not been spared; the WHO reports 521 healthcare workers have been infected and 272 have died. Gordon said many of the people she photographed spoke honestly about their fear of contracting the disease. Sonnie Ville, a 34-year-old former office clerk with two children, says she almost quit after the first day. She waited three weeks before telling her mother she was working around Ebola.


“I was so afraid,” Ville told Gordon. “But I encouraged myself that I can make it. My people are dying, and if I go back home, more people will die.”


It was scary for Gordon too. She never went into containment areas and stayed out of houses where people were sick so she didn’t have to wear full protection. But the assignment still required the utmost caution. Every time she got out of the car she wore rubber boots and when she was out making pictures she never touched anything. And she was forever washing her hands and gear.


It was hard being afraid, she says, but it was even worse being unable to interact closely with people; caution required documenting things from a safe distance. She’s spent years working in Africa and says her photography has focused on telling personal stories. This time, she says, she felt completely removed and dehumanized.


“The things I love most about being a photographer are things like greeting people and ingratiating myself,” she says. “I never want to stand six feet away and scream questions at people.”



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