This work describes and illustrates peoples' stories with healthcare. Whether patients or their family members, doctors or nurses, other healthcare workers or those who know little of its particulars, these images and words – these peoples' words – create not just a portrait of them but a picture of their own complex relationship to illness.

The portraits, in particular, made by the repeated writing of each person's story, line by line on the page, writing their words over and on top of each other, bring out the person's face. The portraits serve as a testament to each person’s story as well as a reminder of the tedious and unremitting nature of being sick and of taking care of those who are.

Even though these portraits are vague, in part to maintain the anonymity and dignity of each person, the images' lack of definition also represents the flawed and fragile part of ourselves that we do not want to acknowledge: that our sense of self is often obscured by illness.

The stories told in these works are of depression, but also love; of chronic illness, but also joy; of lives on the verge of being thrown away and those who seek to save them. The roles many of these people play are multiple: sometimes both patient and parent, sometimes both doctor and depressed. However, in all cases these people reveal a complicated humanity in dialog with illness.

These stories and images illustrate the ambiguous nature and incomprehensibility of illness in our culture. For the people in these portraits, their stories challenge the notion of being defined by their own medical history – professional, patient, or otherwise – and declare them as powerful authors of their own experience.