Second Story art show: Vancouver doctor reflects on photography, world travel

Leslie Struxness is developing an idea for an artist talk she’s set to deliver Jan. 14, inside the Camas Public Library’s Second Story Gallery.

“What I want to convey, I think, is actually a lot about how I’ve transformed,” Struxness said. “My initial message is to recognize your inherent biases, to know that it’s by the grace of God where we are born and raised and the access we have to resources and power.”

A doctor of obstetrics and gynecology (OB-GYN) who has practiced in Vancouver for nearly four decades, Struxness often travels with medical teams to far-flung places following a natural disaster or when there is a need for medical assistance.

In the past 17 years she has traveled the world with nonprofit groups such as Medical Teams International and Faith in Practice, providing care to people in Nepal, Africa, Fiji, Guatemala and other regions.

And when the 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 one, general-purpose camera lens.

On Friday, Jan. 3, Struxness attended the Second Story Gallery’s art reception for her “Transformation Through Travel” photography show.

The show, which runs through the end of this month, features dozens of Struxness’ travel photos grouped by region on the gallery walls. She points to a photo of an elderly woman peeking from her doorway. The woman was quarantined during the COVID pandemic, Struxness explains, and couldn’t leave her home, but was peeking her head out the door to throw some birdseed and breadcrumbs to her pigeons.

The photo shares a slice of life in Guatemala most will never have the chance to experience, but shooting portraits doesn’t come naturally to the Vancouver doctor. Typically, Struxness, who now works about half-time performing robotic surgery for the Vancouver Clinic and is preparing to enter full-time retirement at the end of this year, doesn’t gravitate toward photographing people or even animals. Rather, it is the landscapes — the wildness and changing nature of the natural world — that captivates her and catches 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 stunning landscape photos taken during her travels to Africa, Alaska, Argentina, Chile, Nepal and even to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where her mother lives in McMinnville, Oregon, and where Struxness and her husband of 25 years, Les, who oversees his family’s century-old farm, grow a variety of wine grapes, hazelnuts and trees for timber.

“The farm is our second home,” Struxness said. “We bounce back and forth between Yamhill County (Oregon) and Vancouver.”

Struxness said she and Les have several projects on the farm that will keep them busy after she retires at the end of 2025.

“There is a lot of maintenance,” Struxness said. “I expect I’ll spend half my time there and still maintain a small condo in Vancouver.”

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 often 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 introduction, 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 states. “Every moment is a hidden look into a new perspective, culture or worldview. When I share my photos with others, stories unfold; sparking emotion and transforming the viewer. The moment lives on.”

Struxness is painfully aware that some of her photos may have captured views 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 an unexpected, late-season hurricane; coral in Belize’s barrier reef that are actively dying.

“We’re losing our oceans,” Struxness, an experienced diver, said, 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.”

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. 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,” Struxness said. “Your life is fuller if you give back, but also when you’re working with like-minded people and you rub off on each other.”

And if there is one thing Struxness has learned in her travels and as a medical professional working with people from wildly diverse cultures, it is that people share more commonalities than differences. That is something she hopes to highlight in her upcoming artist talk at the Second Story Gallery, which will take place from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 14.

“We have so many stereotypes and biases that we don’t even know we have,” Struxness said. “But when you see the complexities, it all comes back to that commonality. We’re more alike than different. That’s what I’m trying to portray. And I hope people will find a way to connect, and never doubt that they’re making an impact, good or bad, so do good where you can. It’s never too little.”

To learn more about Struxness, her art and her “Transformation Through Travel” photography exhibit at the Second Story Gallery, visit worldwideimagesbyleslie.com or cityofcamas.us/library/page/exhibitions-second-story-gallery.