When Jim Berger first stepped into the Scheie Eye Institute’s darkroom over 30 years ago, he was not aware that ophthalmic photography would lie in store for his career. Jim’s next three decades at Scheie have been defined by his craftsmanship and continual learning of new innovations—as well as his dedication to both patients and physicians. Jim has made countless stories, conditions, and data visible through film, slides—and later on, pixels.
Jim Berger joined the Scheie Eye Institute in 1995, when STAT angiograms were hand-developed and photography was as much a tactile process as a visual one. “It took about 45 minutes to do one handmade angiogram [back then],” Jim recalled. “You had to move fast—patients were waiting.”
Before the digital wave, Jim worked behind the scenes in the darkroom, hand-developing up to eight rolls of film at a time for fluorescein angiograms. His photography work took off after seven years, when he began formal training under Bill Nyberg, then Director of Photography and one of his key mentors. “I had already been a photographer [at the time],” Jim said, “but not this kind.”
Alongside colleagues and long-time mentors Bill Nyberg, Dr. Alexander Brucker, Cheryl Devine, and Laurel Weeney—who had been a staff member of the Scheie Eye Institute and the Department of Ophthalmology since the 1970s—Jim helped document everything from STAT cases to Thursday morning resident lectures. In the pre-digital era, Jim manually arranged and displayed slides in the Scheie basement to support educational lectures with visual data before scanners and PowerPoint were widespread.
Jim was also a part of the team that captured community as well as medicine. He and his colleagues photographed celebrations and faculty dinners, moments Jim especially enjoyed.
The early 2000s summoned sweeping change. Around 2003, the first OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) machine arrived, and the Department of Ophthalmology began the transition from film to digital.
Jim helped bring in new digital cameras, blending his darkroom expertise with a new era of rapid imaging. Still, the classics remained. “We had three FF4s and one slit lamp,” he notes. “Dr. [Alexander] Brucker loved the classic camera—we still use it for studies.”
Jim’s career has spanned renovations, technological leaps, and departmental growth. Throughout it all, some anchors have remained constant: his quiet presence and trained eye.
As one of Scheie’s veterans—with 30 years and counting of experience within the Scheie family—Jim’s work continues to affect vision-saving research, educate patients, and provide timeless and informative glimpses into the human eye.
by Maressa Park