I See You / I C U

“A hospital is a world of hope and meaning, a place where heaven and earth touch,” says Sharon Abeles, a fine-art photographer who documented the experiences of her dying brother, Marvin, in Lenox Hill’s ICU in 2019.  Marvin Sauerhoff, fifty-eight, spent the last five-and-a-half months of his life within the hospital’s walls, surrounded by devoted family, friends, extraordinary doctors, nurses, support staff and the chaplain. Every step of his journey was anchored in hope, humor, holiness and love. 

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Sharon’s photographs take visitors on a visual odyssey that captures the sanctity and heroism of Lenox Hill.  Her photos carry us along pristine hospital corridors and allow us to gaze through the large-framed windows that reflect the view from within the world of the patient, which was curtains, bed sheets, medical equipment, hushed voices, sacred objects, changing light. 

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“The hospital offered the most compassionate environment: a loving team of doctors, nurses, and technicians, providing everything for the patients’ care. The photographs became a kind of therapy for me and for my brother, mirroring a deeper level of life.  I would shoot the photos, then show them to him, and it created a new way of communicating, especially since he was intubated part of the time. It gave me a way to understand the inevitability of release, the stages of my brother's ebbing life.”

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             Sharon and Marvin’s sister, Henya Storch, a nurse living in Woodmere, elaborates:

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“Marvin was a ’kibbitzer,’ a joker. Plagued by double vision, he told his devoted wife, Jody, ’Now you are even more beautiful to me because I see two of you.’  Emerging from a 10 ½ hour surgery to remove a tumor in the brain and sinuses, a nurse asked him, ’Do you know where you are?’  ’Where am I?’ he asked.  ’ICU,’ she answered. ’I see you too,’ Marvin quipped.   Hence the name of the exhibit: ’I See You,’ a loving tribute to Marvin and his indomitable spirit.”

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