From The Vault of Art Shay: Dr. Michael Lewis

By Art Shay in News on Apr 18, 2012 6:00PM

At the recent opening of his exhibition at the upscale Chicago Mark Shale clothing store on Michigan Avenue,a momentarily serious Dr. Michael Lewis displays two of his favorite images: A Ghana villager with eye-distorting cataracts and, 15 minutes after surgery, the same man gleeful in a Dr. Geoff Tabin field hospital reacting to his first normal sight of his family since childhood. \"I had tears of joy in my eyes while taking the pictures,\" Lewis recalls. \r\n

As the Bulls\' floor doctor, Lewis once had to make a mid-game decision during a playoff game. Jordan\'s eyelid was bleeding. The size of the bandage Lewis applied would have determined whether Jordan continued to play. Lewis gave Michael the strongest minimal super Band-Aid possible over the stricken eyelid and Jordan went on to victory. \"I could see the next day Chicago headlines. \'Doctor benches Jordan, Bulls lose.\'\"\r\n

The cover of Lewis\'s best selling book. My main contribution as photo guru- was helping Lewis think in \"pairs\" of animals. Mostly this involved editing guidance for publication. He aleady had the pictures!\r\n

This poignant image of Cambodians who lost limbs to land mines never fails to underline the horror of war. It is a quintessential work of history as art. I feel if Lewis had created just this one image in his lifetime it would stand forever as a group portrait of man\'s inhumanity to man in our time. What we mindlessly do to each other. Several hospitals, galleries, collectors, critics and museums agree . \r\n

The nondes\cript tiny Irish village of Achill Island, located off the coast of County Mayo, has its beauty enhanced by the Lewis Nikon and a natural rainbow. Like all true nature photographers, Lewis eschews Photoshop which is capable of even adding angels, or God Himself, to the rainbow coalition. If Lewis found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, don\'t you know, begorra, for sure he\'d have donated it to the Cataract Project.\r\n

This tough old Cuban grandma unflinchingly poses for the Lewis telephoto smoking the island\'s most famous export. The compositional balance of this picture—flowers,necklace, cigar, faint mocking smile—delights my critical eye. I have seen much less artful museum murals and giant $100,000 self portraits of a wildly successful lady fotog who\'s devoted her professional life to pictures of herself in various cute get-ups. Like this one. \r\n

A pride of Namibian lady lions between courses.\r\n

Perfect cartoon of the Supreme Court members about to savage medical care for 30 million citizens. Alaskan living—with free government care—does that to some fellow creatures. Here Lewis has captured a symbolic double portrait. For the birds. Lighten up boys.\r\n

In Jodhphur, central India, known as the Sun City, a suspicious husband uncertainly displays his macho self and beautiful wife for the Lewis camera. One must remember a week ago the wire services carried a picture of one such sequestered wife weeping over the body of her newborn daughter. Her husband killed the girl baby for not being a son. I believe the judge understood and compassionately freed the husband.

Dr. Lewis autographs some recent purchases of his work at Mark Shale clothing store on Chicago\'s Michigan Avenue. \r\n

Family friend and photo maven, rock star Billy Corgan, regales Michael\'s wife, writer Valerie Lewis (left) and Dr. Lewis\'s mother Beadie Lewis of Houston, with a tale from the showbiz crypt. Naw. He\'s really inviting them to the forthcoming opening of his teashop in suburban Chicago. \r\n

A couple of Lewis\'s Anarctic friends manage to dance together for his medium telephoto, a picture soon to hang on a Loop office wall, proceeds going to the Himalayan Cataract project.\r\n

These buyers chose a book for their table and pictures for a home office.\r\n

With Valerie Lewis behind her, this triumphant Mark Shale manager couldn\'t resist buying a print of Michael Lewis\'s famous close-up of a scary New Guinea head-hunter.\r\n

(Legendary Chicago-based photographer Art Shay has taken photos of kings, queens, celebrities and the common man in a 60-year career. In this week's look at his archives, Art shares photos from a dear friend and groundbreaking surgeon.)

We achievers are fair game for anyone remotely creative. Especially photographers. People have the mistaken idea that we can pass on the keys to our achievements by words alone. Not so. Usually overlooked are the tough lives, supportive parents, mamas who ferry their promising young, or opposite types of non-supportive parents whose neglect and inattention serves as a goad. This happened to rock star Billy Corgan as he notes emotionally in a forthcoming Chicago documentary by Mike Caplan.

Unpredictable tropes—like the one Mike Wallace confessed to his grandson in a weird interview just before Mike's death. "When I was your age I had terrible acne. I covered it up with hard work—compensating for the bad skin, I guess." And went on to do 800 great, perky interviews that characterize 60 Minutes to this day.

We famous image mavens tend to be oddball characters, driven for one reason or another like Mike Wallace, Tiger Woods, Hemingway, Madonna, Keith Richards. Musicians, TV stars, Vegas card sharks and the subject of today's illustrated sermon, a multi-talented surgeon and world class photographer, Dr. Michael S. Lewis who, incidentally, just won a senior tennis tournament in his native Texas.

While putting together yet another book of fantastic animal and nature pictures and supervising his photo exhibits at several upscale Chicago clothing stores. (As well as in galleries and medical installations across the country and places like Chicago's Cultural Center.) All the while replacing knees and hips at the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute, where he is still on the Board of the founding Dr. Meltzer Group. All they did was initiate modern knee and hip surgery about fifty years ago when I photographed them for Time. Dr. Michael S. Lewis became my friend. And I became his photo guru. (Despite George Bernard Shaw's warning: "Protect me from the gifted amateur.")

Which is my long-winded way of introducing you to the world-class nature photography of my gifted friend. And the admirable Schweitzerian work he furthers by contributing to renowned Harvard Opthalmologist Geoff Tabin's Himalayan Cataract Project in his battle against blindness. (Tabin's hobby? He's climbed Everest and many other peaks. Because they're there.)

Tabin wanders impoverished countries like Bhutan, Nepal, Sudan, India and Ghana—where Lewis worked with him in 2007—and Geoff not only does the amazing 15-minute cataract procedures, but trains native doctors to do them, too. The object is to restore eyesight in even the remotest villages. The Geoff Tabin teams do up to 300 procedures a day, excising the cataracts and replacing them with quality lenses. The results are practically instant. People see their families clearly for the first time. They can work again! They've done 200,000 procedures so far! Enough to fill Chicago's Soldier Field three times!"

"The work comes down to $20 an eye for expenses—a small price to pay for this miracle," says Lewis. The entire proceeds of sales from Lewis's five books and highly prized—but not too highly—priced pictures (I've included some of them in today's gallery) is channeled to the Himalyan Cataract Project, now branching out from Bhutan, Nepal, and India to Africa, including Tanzania and Rwanda. "We know this good work will go on long after we're gone," enthuses Lewis with the upbeat zeal of a missionary.

How does this Chicago achiever relax? Like lots of people: Tennis. His brimming resume describes victories in state championships and a recent win in his native Houston in a senior tournament. He got into sports in typical Lewis fashion—by being a consulting orthopedic doctor for the Chicago White Sox, the Chicago Wolves hockey team, and the Chicago Bulls' "floor doctor" in their championship heyday. Celebrities seek him out. He owns two championship rings, parked in bank vaults for his two young grandsons in Hawaii,

Valerie Dewar Searle Lewis, Dr. Lewis's wife, mother to their two accomplished daughters, a fellow world wanderer, Darfur humanitarian and writer, often travels with him and helps him publish a periodic bulletin on their adventures, "Round the World".

Said Mrs. Lewis after helping start the cataract project in Ghana: "We saw evidence of donations from people like us in the U.S.providing water storage tanks. Tanks sometimes make an enormous difference in health and farming. A well can transform the lives of women and girls in a village, for they are the ones who spend hours each day walking to a water source and hauling heavy buckets of it home." When serious critics praise Lewis's pictures and books, he modestly shrugs it off. "Oh," scoffs this super-achiever.

"That's just fun—like tennis."

To find out more about the Himalayan Cataract Project, visit cureblindness.org or write to Himalayan Cataract Project, PO Box 55, Waterbury, Vermont 05676

If you can't wait until this time every Wednesday to get your Art Shay fix, please check out the photographer's blog, which is updated regularly. Art Shay's book, Nelson Algren's Chicago, is also available at Amazon.