The current pandemic has dramatically brought the work of doctors and nurses to the public’s attention, but operating theaters and intensive care units in hospitals are places where people have to make life-and-death decisions every single day.

Günter Valda has been working as an emergency room nurse in a clinic for 16 years. Two years ago, he started to capture his daily experience with a camera – the patients’ struggle for life and the strenuous efforts of his colleagues.

His photos expose the emergency room as a world of its own and reveal the tightrope that patients and staff walk. The sterile aesthetics of spaces without daylight, crammed with medical equipment, are sometimes the setting of dramatic scenes. Valda’s pictures seem to exhale the tension and fear of the moment. With “House of Fate”, he has created an intense and haunting account that literally gets under your skin.