Photo Gallery of Michael Amendolia

Reportage Online will present regular photojournalism features.

This gallery was produced by postgraduate student Tish Peiris. It presents six images featured in the book, "Seeing is Believing," published by McGregor for The Fred Hollows Foundation. Michael Amendolia took all the photographs for this project. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to the Hollows Foundation.

Professor Frederick Cossum Hollows was born on the 9th April 1929, on the South Island of New Zealand. Though he initially intended on a life of divinity, he found himself in medicine.

He was acutely aware of the the inequalities that exist in the world. In his 1991 autobiography, Hollows refers to a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson as capturing the essence of what he strived to achieve in his lifetime :

To laugh often and much,
To win the respect of intelligent people
And the affection of children,
To earn the appreciation of honest critics
And endure the betrayal of false friends,
To appreciate beauty
To find the best in others,
To leave the world a bit better,
Whether by a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition,
To know even one life has breathed easier
because you have lived,
This is to have succeeded.

The photograph above shows Professor Hollows in the courtyard at the Institute of Opthamology in Hanoi, examining a trauma-related cataract in the eye of nine year old Tran Van Giap. Hollows assessed a number of patients, and selected those who were operable. He and his team of Australian eye surgeons then performed the surgery, and at the same time taught the the techniques of inter-ocular cataract surgery to Vietnamese eye surgeons.

 
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