Javid Kamali - ICU Physician /Photographer
About Javid
By Mary Rosanne Katzke
Javid Kamali was born and raised in Iran, and studied medicine at the University of
Vienna, Austria. He completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, in Pittsburgh PA, where he also attended photography classes on the side at Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
Javid completed his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine in Albuquerque NM. When living in Albuquerque he joined a very vibrant and
diverse photography community while also expanding his photography vision through multiple workshops with world class photographers at Santa Fe Workshops. He has lived in Anchorage, Alaska since 2007 working as an ICU physician.
Javid has found that, by helping balance his left and right brain, photography has continued to provide a welcome escape from a stressful job in the medical field.
“I love to be able to break and create my own rules when I make art because at work I must adhere to very strict rules of medicine,” he says. “I have intentionally tried to separate these two worlds, as in my mind they compete with each other to gain my full attention. In fact, I have tried to suppress each one while I was fully committed to the other.”
The pandemic project, however, is very different from Javid’s other works. In this endeavor he has consciously merged these two competing sides of his life, to create a project that is both socially relevant and artistically satisfying.
“All of a sudden my two sides became allies,” he says. “My artistic half has become the voice of the physician half who wants to cry out about the devastation that is ongoing behind the doors of the ICU. I hope the product of this merger will change some viewers’ perspectives of the pandemic and, hence, their behavior in relation to it.”