Memento Mori and Photographic Perspective of Roadside Trauma

David Nance's photographs invite us to cross the liminal space between road and roadside and to consider the experience that trauma surgeons share with injured patients and the families of the injured and the dead. Just as trauma surgeons use the tools of science and surgery to make order out of the chaos of "the scene," so patients' families use art, found objects, and grief to transform anonymous roadsides into specific, personal remembrances. Bound together by the uncertainties of trauma, we can all stand at the side of the road bearing witness to both the inevitability and unpredictability of death.