Studying medicine, creating art

January 16, 2026
Brett Goerl hanging one of his photographs

Photographer Brett Goerl, a UVA School of Medicine and Darden School of Business student, adjusts a photo in his exhibition at the UVA Health University Medical Center. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

Brett Goerl is pursuing psychiatry with a camera in hand. 

Goerl, currently a student in both the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine and its Darden School of Business, created a photographic exhibit, “Figuring the Sublime,” on display in the UVA Health University Medical Center’s main lobby through March 12, one of six art displays scheduled for 2026.

Goerl, who eschews digital cameras to shoot landscapes on film, will be the only photographer featured.

“Not only is his work of excellent quality, but his being featured as an artist will communicate to medical students, resident trainees and other practicing clinicians – and also patients and family caregivers – that pursuing an arts practice can be both a possible and powerful humanistic complement to working in health care,” said Marcia Day Childress, professor emeritus of medical education and Goerl’s supervisor for a humanities/arts independent research project.

Goerl framing a photograph

Goerl applies glue to the backing board as he learns framing from Bree Riffel at Fast Frames, (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

“I know Brett finds his photography to be at once exacting and relaxing,” Childress said. “And for others in medicine, perhaps his work will suggest that they, too, can find energy, joy and renewal through an arts practice.”

Goerl started with a digital camera, but was introduced to film by Pro Camera in Charlottesville. When he had an opportunity to take a four-week course at the Berlin Art Institute in 2022, he went retro.

“The whole idea was going to Berlin to do art – a push to try things new,” he said. “I took my dad’s old Pentax and just committed to shooting that. I couldn’t develop the film until I left Berlin, so I had no idea how the first shoots were going to be, but the photos turned out really powerful for me.”

Goerl enjoys the mechanical nature of film cameras and appreciates the limitations of film, likening the process to solving a puzzle.

“The intention and practice of it makes better photographs for me,” he said. “Thinking about the resource constraints with film, the film speed versus aperture versus shutter speed. It’s this challenge that I’m having to figure out on location, and that makes me really intentional about what I shoot.”

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For Goerl, being a good field photographer is about observing and anticipating when something unique is happening in an otherwise familiar space, a skill he also uses with his patients.

“Remaining keen and aware of changes in patient appearance, tone, and body language helps you understand the challenge and become a more informed clinician before asking any questions,” he said. “I have always valued the skill of the doorway exam: noticing the environment and the patient’s relationship to it before even starting the visit, because it clues you into the problem. Photography sharpens these skills and acts as a creative outlet that brings me joy.”

He said literature indicates that art in clinical settings can improve both patient and provider well-being.

“I hope my exhibition offers viewers an opportunity to step into the beauty of our world in an otherwise built, clinical environment,” he said.

Goerl's images show the influence of the Hudson River School, the 19th-century American landscape painting tradition, to which he was exposed as a teen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

Jackie Szabo and Brandon Keys view Goerl’s photographs in the UVA Medical Center lobby

Jackie Szabo, left, and Brandon Keys, right, from Radiology admire Goerl’s photographs with the artist in the lobby of the UVA Health University Medical Center. (Photo by Matt Riley, University Communications)

“I fell in love with the man versus nature aesthetic of the Hudson River School,” he said. “The concept clicked for me during my art residency (in Berlin). I was doing a shoot with a friend in a flower field by the Czech border and asked her to sit among the flowers. I made a photo of her in the corner of the frame, enveloped by lavender in a bucolic landscape.”

As a photographer, Goerl has many influences.

“Ansel Adams influenced me with his process and commitment to photographing the sublime,” Goerl said. “His famous shot of Yosemite’s Half Dome hangs in the optometry practice where my father works and where I worked the front desk in high school. He favored the medium-format Hasselblad that I now shoot with.”

Goerl said his MBA studies also shaped the project. “Darden has sharpened my communication skills and given me the confidence to share my work publicly. This exhibition is ultimately a form of communication, a way of bringing art into conversation with medicine.”

Photography, he said, teaches presence and attentiveness. “Those are qualities I hope will serve me well in patient care,” he said.

Media Contacts

Matt Kelly

University News Associate Office of University Communications

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