Documenting Medicine with a Camera

Name: Dr. John W. Moses Jr.Position: Associate professor of pediatrics; Center for Documentary Studies instructor; co-director of the Documenting Medicine programYears at Duke: 28

What I do at Duke: Most of my time is spent as a primary care pediatrician. That’s my full-time job, which I enjoy. The teaching I do at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke is in the evenings, and there are documentary projects I work on myself. It’s a slow-going process of completing projects, and I see the need to do them because I think making photographs and trying to consider medical issues outside the clinical setting makes me a better physician. With that in mind, Duke visiting lecturer Liisa Ogburn and I created the Documenting Medicine program in 2011. We’ve had 35 medical documentary fellows. We’ve had more folks apply than we’ve had room for. That program that I help Liisa with has been more than just an enjoyable activity for the residents. It’s really given them a chance to explore whatever it is they’re interested in.

If I had $5 million, I would: probably use it to increase the pay of teachers in public schools. I think what they do is so important, particularly in the early years, like kids in preschool through first grade. Those can be very formative years.

My first ever job: being a bus boy one summer in New Hampshire. It was a lakeside restaurant on Lake Winnipesaukee, the Staffordshire Inn.

My dream job: still practice pediatrics, but less than I do now, to have more time to devote to documentary photography.

The best advice I ever received: to go ahead and get your M.D., to finish your degree, because I’d never regret having that degree.

What I love about Duke: Duke has been supportive of the somewhat unusual career path I have pursued, to be a practicing physician but also a documentary photographer. The Department of Pediatrics and the Center for Documentary Studies have been very accommodating of my pursuit of my interests.

Something most people don’t know about me: my hobbies, which are windsurfing and I’ve been a drummer since I was a little kid.

An interesting/memorable day at work for me: One poignant moment I had this week was on Wednesday, I saw a 17-year-old adolescent who I hadn’t seen for many years. He knew me right away and reminded me that I had checked on him when he was a baby when he lived next door to me in Durham. Having been here as long as I have, seeing patients, some of whom go back my entire time here at Duke, that’s really rewarding.

Documentary work I like: There was a photojournalist who worked in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s named W. Eugene Smith who published a number of photo essays in Life magazine and released one about a country doctor in Colorado and another about a nurse mid-wife in South Carolina. They were really very powerful.

A pet peeve: If a student is texting in class.