Vancouver doctor captures the world in photos while trying to change it
Leslie Struxness works with nonprofit groups such as Medical Teams International and Faith in Practice to provide care in underserved areas of the world
CAMAS — Shooting portraits doesn’t come naturally to Leslie Struxness, a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology who has practiced in Vancouver for nearly four decades.
Struxness travels with medical teams to far-flung places following natural disasters or when there is a need for medical assistance.
In the past 17 years, she has worked with nonprofit groups such as Medical Teams International and Faith in Practice, providing care to people in Nepal, Africa, Fiji and Guatemala, among other regions.
When a medical trip ends, Stuxness, 71, likes to stay for another two or three weeks to explore the country, go on solo hikes, get to know the locals, and find stunning landscapes she can capture with her trusty Olympus camera and its single general-purpose lens.
Information
To learn more about Struxness, her art and the “Transformation Through Travel” photography exhibit at the Second Story Gallery, visit worldwideimagesbyleslie.com or clbn.us/SecondStory.
Those photos will be on display in “Transformation Through Travel,” an exhibit that runs through the end of the month in the Second Story Gallery at the Camas Public Library, 625 N.E. Fourth Ave.
Struxness pointed to a portrait of an elderly woman peeking from her doorway. The woman was quarantined during the COVID-19 pandemic, Struxness said, and couldn’t leave her home but wanted to throw some birdseed and breadcrumbs to the pigeons.
The photo is a slice of life in Guatemala most will never experience.
Typically, Struxness — who now works half-time at Vancouver Clinic and is preparing to retire at the end of this year — doesn’t gravitate toward photographing people or even animals. Rather, the wildness and changing nature of the natural world in landscapes captivate her and catch her eye.
“The group I was with in Nepal asked me to do some portraits of people, but I don’t feel like I’m any good at that,” Struxness said. “I am still more intrigued with landscapes and street scenes.”
The Second Story Gallery show highlights the best of Struxness’ travel photography, including dozens of landscape photos taken during her travels to Africa, Alaska, Argentina, Chile, Nepal and even Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where her mother lives in McMinnville. Struxness and her husband of 25 years, Les, who oversees his family’s century-old farm there, grow a variety of wine grapes, hazelnuts and trees harvested for timber.
“The farm is our second home,” Struxness said. “We bounce back and forth between Yamhill County and Vancouver.”
Struxness said she and Les have several projects on the farm that will keep them busy after she retires.
The rest of her time, however, will likely be spent exploring the world and searching for photos that might help show people the subtle — and not-so-subtle — changes taking place in the natural environment.
“I view a lot of what I do as, ‘At least I can document that moment,’ ” Struxness said. “And that’s more and more important to me as I age and see a lot of changes.”
On her website, she speaks to the important role photography plays in documenting the world.
“Photography allows me to capture and immortalize a moment in all its detail; the light peeking through the trees, a child holding their mother’s hand, a door designed by a master craftsman,” Struxness wrote.
She knows that some of her photos may have captured areas that may soon be unrecognizable due to climate change — the calving glaciers off the southern tip of South America; areas in Cuba that were hit by a late-season hurricane; coral in Belize’s barrier reef that are dying.
“We’re losing our oceans,” said Struxness, an experienced diver, adding that she hopes to capture more underwater photos during her dives off Central America and in the South Pacific. “I just started using a SeaLife camera that is very, very easy to use and is a great underwater camera.”
Our commonalities
If there is one thing Struxness has learned interacting with diverse groups from all over the world, it’s that people share more commonalities than differences.
“We have so many stereotypes and biases that we don’t even know we have,” she said. “But when you see the complexities, it all comes back to that commonality. We’re more alike than different. ”
When she considers her body of photographic work, Struxness said, she thinks about how finding these passions — for photography, travel, medicine, working with medical teams — has shifted her own outlook on life.
“It is more and more clear to me that, to live a full life, you have to give back, whether it is your time or your money or your philanthropy, and you have to find your passion,” Struxness said. “Maybe it’s your church or volunteering at free clinics, or maybe it is nature and belonging to an organization that is preserving the environment.
“Your life is fuller if you give back.”
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