 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| BEST IMAGE DEPICTING SCIENCE OR TECHNOLOGY |
Photographer: Max Aguilera-Hellweg. |
|
| "Here`s your picture, Max," said Dr. Joseph Bruner of Nashville`s Vanderbilt University Hospital. With that, he gently lifted the right arm of the 24-week-old fetus in Trish Switzer`s womb. |
|
| Doctors had detected spina bifida, which could cause the child to suffer paralysis, incontinence and brain damage, and were performing experimental fetal surgery in an |
| attempt to repair the problem. |
|
| Max Aguilera-Hellweg was perched on a ladder, four feet off the ground, staring awestruck through his lens. "Society has never imagined operating on the unborn fetus - until now," he says. It may seem strange for a doctor to halt surgery, however briefly, for the benefit of a photographer. But Aguilera-Hellweg, 44, is also a doctor-in-the-making. Despite a prestigious photographic career (he won an Eisie last year, too), he will enter Tulane University`s medical school this summer. |
|
| "As much as I`ve enjoyed photographing guys saving other guys` lives," he says, "I want to be the guy saving other guys` lives." Aguilera-Hellweg has photographed more than 150 surgeries, but as he squeezed off this shot, he suspected he might have something special. "When the film came back from the lab," he says, "I went straight to Home Depot and bought a fireproof safe to keep it in." |
|
|
|
