Nurse Using Photography To Preserve Coronavirus Epidemic's Moment In History
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- An Anoka County nurse is using a different set of skills to show appreciation for her fellow health care workers.
Emily Koivisto works at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids, and in her spare time, she has traveled to about a dozen area hospitals to photograph some of the workers.
Her gift to the people in her photographs is a moment of escape. She and another photographer friend have visited dozens of hospitals, and taken hundreds of photos.
She says it's about acknowledging the hard work being done in these places, and saying thanks.
"They're very humble. They'll say it's just what we do. And it is what we do but we don't normally do it under these conditions," Koivisto said.
She says "we" because she's doing this all while working as a critical care nurse herself.
"You can see it just in people's faces and their eyes that they're tired. A 12- or even an eight-hour shift feels like a 16-hour shift," she said.
The photographs represent more than just appreciation, too. Koivisto says one of her main motivations in doing this project is to create a permanent document of history. One of the places she's been able to do that is at Abbott Northwestern in Minneapolis.
"It's important to be able to have something etched in stone," she said. "I don't know, maybe in 100 years these will be the photos that our grandkids and great-grandkids are looking at."
She's not finished, either. The requests from more care departments -- more first responders -- are rolling in, and Koivisto says she'll get to everyone she can.
"I'm glad that I can do it for people. It makes me feel good too," she said.