WAITING ROOM: How and when was it that you decided to bring your photography to your patients?

Dr. Bernard Lewinsky: I always had a nature bent in my blood. I started putting my photography up because people said that they liked what I was doing. When you have an office that needs decoration it is much cheaper to put up your own work than to go buy it.

WR: Why did you choose photography as your artistic medium of choice?

BL: It is interesting because my mother was a painter and my father played the violin. My youngest sister is an artist. I got a camera when I was 8 years old. I started to photograph and that became what I wanted to do. I got divorced 17 years ago or so and in that process I needed to do something for myself. Photography is what I did. I started to do workshops. I started to photograph. It is my form of healing.

I went through a rather hectic period in my life with my family. I would go into the dark room and I would close the door, shut off the world, put the music on that I like and print. The majority of the photographs that I printed during that dark period were dark, stark black and white with very little gray. As the crisis passed and I got into a better space, I began to work in the grays.

WR: In an article that you wrote in May 1998 you stated, "an ambiance that embodies the strength of nature helps the healing process." What did you mean by that?

Dr. BL: I think that if you are very ill and let's say that you are not religious - you need a spiritual connection with something to get you through what you are going through. An image of nature can provide you with the vehicle for finding some form of inner peace.
Photographs can convey the peacefulness that patients are trying to get and sometimes they can't. From that point of view, I think they help the healing process.

LR: What kind of advice do you give to patients that want to create an environment like this at home?

Dr. BL: I ask them what they like, what they want to achieve, what they are getting out of this, what is it that they have, what is it that they do, and what do they like. They need to create an environment around the answers to those questions. They need to create an environment that soothes them.

WR: Do you consider this an alternative therapy?

BL: No, I don't. There are a lot of things that I take into account. I want to be known as a radiation oncologist that treats cancer. I don't want people to think that I am out in left field trying to heal their cancer by showing patients photographs. That is not what I am doing. My extent is that if you come to my office and you are anxious and if the environment in my office makes you feel good and if that is because of my photographs, then great. If not, then so be it. That is as far as I go.

WR: Do you notice differences in the success levels between patients that have what you would consider a more positive psyche compared to those that are less positive?

BL: Let me put it this way - I am not going to answer that. When a patient comes in and is worried about every single detail in their life and what will happen because of the cancer and with the cancer and he is just really, really anxious - I will write in my chart, 'Patient is exceedingly anxious, not relaxed, not focused.'

When they come back with recurrences you can sort of correlate that. I am not saying this is scientific. I have no explanation why people recur other than the cancer did not get killed. But there is a negative aspect to negative thinking and there is a positive aspect to positive thinking. Now if you are a Pollyanna and you process everything in a Pollyanna way...

WR: A Pollyanna?

BL: [in a humorous, over exaggerated voice] 'Oh everything is just fine, doctor. No, I am not concerned about the cancer. Go ahead and do what you need to do because I'm fine.' This is total denial. I do not think this person is going to do very well if something goes wrong.

WR: Can you tell when your photography has reached your patients and when it has not?

BL: They let me know in different ways. Patients will say that they love to come back to see the photographs or they say that it makes them feel good. I have had enough comments of that nature to know that it has an impact on some people, but not all people.

At our office in West Hills [California] I am taking things to a new level. This office will be a photography gallery where you happen to get radiation. I am working with the architects to create a walkway into the treatment room that will be like a photographic gallery.

The entry into room where patients get radiation will have floor to ceiling murals of two big waterfalls. The floors will have little pebbles so it looks like the water is going into the ground. There will also be a waterfall outside the treatment room to tie it all together.

In order to make the office feel like a gallery, the waiting room will be a revolving gallery. My friends that photograph will exhibit their work. We might have gallery openings, wine tastings with new photographs, and lectures around photography. We are going to take the office to a new level.

WR: Do you provide any instruction on visualization therapy to your patients or on how to use your photography in their healing process?

BL: The answer is no. I do not like to ram anything down anyone's throat.

In the other office I have pictures of waterfalls, where the falls come down, goes through boulders and then into a peaceful river. I put the three together because they have a message. There are some patients that catch that and some that don't. Either way, for those who want to get it, let them get it.

WR: Do you think there is a general resistance in Western medicine to accept that this could actually work?

BL: The answer is yes, because most of Western medicine is research based and within this, you have to have proof that something follows the right criteria and principles to accept it. With photography, you can never prove anything because it is unique to the individual. You cannot make someone feel something. You cannot put a number to what someone feels.

WR: There are actual studies coming out to support what you are saying.

BL: There are studies that show photography helps. The skeptics are going to disbelieve the studies because they are not scientific enough. There was a study that was published, in which pain medication usage was measured in post-operative recovery rooms. Some of the rooms had photographs of nature in them and others did not. The study showed that the pain medication requirements were much higher in the rooms without photographs. You may jump all over me by saying that and say, 'Well, yes, but there were big orthopedic cases in one room and simple procedures in the other.' But, the study was controlled and this was not the case.

WR: This office (in West Hills) is gorgeous. I have never been to a doctor's office like this. My experience with doctor's offices is that there are usually posters of the human body, signs about the dangers of smoking or the food pyramid decorating the walls, if anything at all.

BL: Some offices even have the drug companies advertising in them.

I have a lecture that I put together when I first started getting into photography. I took medical photographs of all different types: x-rays, microscope photographs, electron microscope photographs. I could look at photographs that I took of nature and put them side by side and you would say that they were the same thing.

For instance, I have a photograph that I took at Zion National Park. It is a whole tree lying on the ground. The branches of the tree created shadows in the photograph. I took an x-ray of the arteries of a kidney that had a tumor in them and placed it next to this Zion photograph. The arteries of the kidney branched in exactly the same way that the tree did. When you put them together you had to step back for a second to realize that they both were not trees.

WR: What do you attribute that to?

BL: Nature replicates itself. Nature is in unity. The body is not from outer space. We are all part of the same. If you take a color electron micrograph of the movement of your pupils, the image is no different than a sunflower. You would think that you could interchange them. I think there is a subliminal connection between us and nature that we do not appreciate. I think that is what eastern brings that western medicine rejects.

WR: Is it because we base everything on data and science?

BL: I think part of it is that, but I also think that it is because eastern culture is so old. They relied on everything that they could in order to heal themselves. We are so new that we believe that the scientific approach is the only way to do things. Look at how much acupuncture is coming into the oncology field. There are more and more paramedical areas that we are going into and the bottom line is-if it helps the patients then who cares.

WR: From what I have read about you and from what I see in this office, you seem to have a very mindful approach to life.

BL: I am introspective. I am a Capricorn, so I do not do anything too quickly. I like to know roughly what the implications are. I do not like change much.

WR: It also means that you are stubborn.

BL: You know, I have been told that, but it doesn't mean that I am stubborn just to be stubborn. Sometimes I have an idea or a vision of what I really like and if someone does not understand the way I am explaining it and I want to do it the way I want to do it, they may call that stubborn.

WR: I was reading the transcript from the Larry King interview and I was really impressed by the strength and integrity you showed throughout everything with your family. Where does this come from?

BL: I grew up in El Salvador. I saw poverty and illness early in my life. I also deal with people that are exceedingly vulnerable. I accept the responsibility I have in helping them cure a very serious problem. If you act too quickly and indecisively you may make the wrong decision, so you need to learn to balance that. How did I get through that period? God knows. It was one of those things that I got through.

WR: One day after another?

BL: One day after another. It was difficult. It was unheard of in history, so to speak, so no one could help me. No one could give me advice. No one could say, 'When I had this problem, this is what I did.' [He laughs] There we were.

WR: How can you reconcile what the media and politics did to your family?

BL: I don't. I really don't. I am bitter about it. But, being bitter about it does not do anybody any good. I learned that.

It did blow my mind a few times and it just came back to haunt me with more off color jokes and more ridiculous comments. The reality is that nobody but us knew what it felt like to go through it. There are the 15 minutes of fame and the media is just that. They pounce on something that can keep their programs going. They will capitalize on it until it dies. If there is a victim or if somebody gets trampled, so be it. At least their ratings were high and that is the reality of what it is all about. I can't tell you the phone calls that I got from everybody in the media. They were so concerned about our health and our life and our, this and that. Do they call me now? Heavens no. I haven't heard from them. They wouldn't even know who I was. We were the soup du jour for a long time.

WR: Is there any sense in your photography of you telling the world this is me? Of you trying to get outside of the media?

BL: Yes. If you looked at what I did during that time it was stark black and white. I was angry. That period has passed. It is what it is. The media got its licking and they got what they wanted out of me. And that is about it. Unfortunately, my daughter was the sacrificial lamb in this whole thing. It was all political. That people can still think about it, that people are still making jokes about it - she cannot do anything without someone making cracks about it. They do not give her any credit for having any brains at all. And, yet when you think about what she went through. The enormous pressure she was under. I mean, getting called to testify in an impeachment trial against the president of the United States?

WR: This was a very young woman. A woman that had bought a prom dress three years prior and now she is going head on with the media, politics and the President of the United States?

BL: Why is it called the Lewinsky affair and not the Clinton affair? Because the media likes it better the other way. But, we are not going to turn back the clock, it is what it is. It was what it was. Might as well just try to forget it.

WR: You know, again, I was just really taken aback by the way you handled yourself with Larry King and Barbara Walters. I do not know how many people could have handled that the way you did.

BL: Part of it was, I really did not know what happened and they did not believe me. I did not know a thing. You can call a spade a spade, but they wanted to call it something else.