Most people try to avoid going to the hospital, but Woodland resident Julia Serat has made an award-winning career out of it.
Three of her photos taken at Shriners Hospital in Sacramento, where she works as their Media Services Manager, were selected for the Children’s Hospital Association’s 2015 photo exhibit.
“Every single day is a success at Shriners,” she said. “I see things that just baffle me.”
Many of the photographs she takes are to document the injuries of patients over time.
Her photos have been included in this exhibit, and others, in previous years but she is particularly excited about this year’s exhibit because the judges had higher accolades than previous judges.
She said she sees kids denying the limitations of their disabilities every day and just the other day she saw a child without arms talking on a cell phone.
“He tucked this phone, it was a flip phone with buttons you can push, under his chin and he accessed the button with his teeth,” she said. “He was able to do this as readily as you and I use our fingers to operate our iPhones. So it was just amazing. And this was second nature to him.”
Serat has many stories like this and she said seeing these things on a daily basis is emotionally rewarding.
One of her photos in the series shows a young burn victim playing the piano despite the fact that 90 percent of her fingers are missing.
When the girl told Serat she was teaching herself how to play the piano, Serat jumped at the chance for a demonstration.
“I think all of us (at Shriners) just marvel at that ability, that sense of confidence and that independence and the normalcy that kids feel, like they can do anything,” she said. “I think there are just a thousand (similar) examples that we see.”
She started working at the hospital 21 years ago after graduating from the Brooks Institute of Photography where she studied scientific/industrial photography in Santa Barbara.
Before discovering her love for photography, Serat graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in psychology and received a camera from her father as a graduation gift.
“It changed the trajectory of my life,” she said. “He probably regretted it ever since.”
She worked in engineering and aerospace before deciding on following her “true passion”, medical photography.
Serat interned at UC Davis, where she met her husband, and Stanford before landing at Shriners because she wanted to work with children.
Now, she has lived with her husband, a retired UC Davis photographer, in Woodland for 23 years and they will soon celebrate their 21st anniversary.
She describes them as “empty-nesters” because they just sent their daughter off to study environmental science and policy at Duke University in North Carolina.
Asked what she does in her free time Julie responded with a laugh, “Is there life outside of photography?”
But she does enjoy gardening, particularly succulents.
When she is behind the camera, she might see a severe injury but feels a distance that detaches her from the moment.
“We’re all human, we all have emotions, but at that moment in time you have a role to perform,” she said.
She describes her role as helping children and she is very aware of that role.
Sometimes emotions come into play, but that awareness lets her “transcend” emotional concerns to get through it.
She hopes that, through her photography, viewers understand the emotions depicted in the photo or more about what the hospital does. She also hopes people who don’t have disabilities look at her photos and work harder at what they do because they realize how hard these kids with disabilities work. She wants to inspire other kids with disabilities to do more than they think is possible.
“That is a very satisfying feeling,” she said. “I feel honored to be able to do that.” She said that getting to tell kids’ stories, capturing triumph and success, is something she really enjoys.
Her favorite photo is “one people will not see.” It was a bereavement photo of a mother who just lost her child. She is bending over and her nose is touching her child’s nose.
“The grief on her face is palpable,” said Serat,
It is one of the most endearing photos she has captured and she is grateful that the mother in the photo trusted her enough to capture that intimate moment.
“It’s probably a moment that I will never forget,” she said.
The Children’s Hospital Association is an overseer of all children’s hospitals in the nation. The exhibit travels the country to spread awareness of the things that children’s hospitals do.
Serat is now in the process of decorating the Shriners hospital walls with canvas wall hangings of her photos.
To view Serat’s photos in the series, go to https://www.childrenshospitals.org/Newsroom/Photo-Gallery/2015-Photo-Exhibit
The exhibit began its national tour in Washington DC on June 22.
Contact Tessa Terrill at 530-406-6232.
