Photography project highlights the care and craft of nurses

“I had no idea that that nurses knew how to do this stuff.”

That’s a typical reaction nurse Jenn Knepper has received over the years to her technical—and personal—work as a nurse.

Now she has captured that work in a unique photography project.

The photography series, “Carry the Day: The Power of a Nurse,” was part of Knepper’s effort to document nurses in the course of their duties at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center’s Medical Intensive Care Unit and Medical Intermediate Care Unit, in conjunction with National Nurses Week. Knepper says the series was inspired by the viral “Humans of New York” series, which used photos and written narratives to tell stories of everyday individuals, and also by her own father’s hospital experience.

The powerful images capture both the care and the craft required of nurses—the emotional impact a nurse has on his or her patients and the “rigorously, scientifically trained” reality of nursing, according to Knepper.