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Sister Act

IT’S NOT UNUSUAL for identical twin sisters Shakha Gillin and Vishakha Gigler to finish one another’s sentences. It happens at least a dozen times within the span of a 10-minute conversation. What isn’t so typical about these 35-year-old siblings is that both are noted physicians with thriving (and neighboring) practices in Encinitas. And both Shakha, a pediatrician at El Camino Pediatrics, and Vishakha, a dermatologist with Comprehensive Dermatology Group, were voted onto this year’s Top Doctors list by their peers (see page 133 for the full listing). It’s Shakha’s third time on the list, Vishakha’s second.

“A family support system and family values are very important to us,” says Vishakha. “Our patients recognize that, and it instills a sense of trust and establishes a personal connection.” Both doctors graduated at the top of their classes from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine (two years apart because Vishakha took some time off). They credit an “internal competitiveness” throughout their schooling——from early education through medical studies——for their success.

Shakha, the self-described “more edgy” twin, and Vishaska have infant sons (a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, respectively) and live in the same Del Mar neighborhood with their husbands. They make no secret of their passion for their profession and their patients.

“We truly love what we do,” says Vishakha, her voice trailing off as Shakha continues: “We’d both do this job for free.” ——JULIA BEESON POLLORENO

From Portraits to Prisons

WHEN SUSAN MADDEN LANKFORD first started working as a professional photographer in San Diego, she was doing press-kit photos and portraits of families living in posh North County suburbs. It was 1984, and she and her husband (real estate developer Rob Lankford) had just moved to Rancho Santa Fe. Lankford had impressive credentials: stints with master wildlife photographer Ansel Adams and New York–based fine-art photographer Roy DeCaraba.

Twenty-four years later, Lankford has published Maggots in My Sweet Potatoes: Women Doing Time, a compelling book of photos and interviews with female inmates and staff at Las Colinas Detention Facility in Santee. For Lankford, it’s been a long road from family portraits to prisons, not just professionally but also personally. Although photographing families in Fairbanks Ranch worked while her three daughters were young, as her children got older Lankford felt the urge to stretch artistically. She started with animals——having owned horses and dogs herself——and began by photographing at the Humane Society, outraged at the numbers of animals regularly euthanized. That opened Lankford’s eyes to the world outside her cloistered community, and she decided to move her studio from North County to downtown. “I needed to find out more about the whole community,” she says. She ended up renting the vacant, old San Diego jail at Seaport Village.

“I have always been fascinated with forms of confinement,” she says. “I grew up in the Midwest, and you spend a lot of time in the cellar, making up games.” The jail was a good place to study light and do commercial work. Outside, homeless men and women watched Lankford hauling equipment in and out of the building. She struck up conversations with them. “They said to me, ‘Come out on the streets and see what life is like here.’ So I did,” she says. “I spent three years with the homeless on the streets, photographing and interviewing.”

Lankford developed friendships with some of those men and women and observed their continual rotation in and out of jail. “These guys would get into jail, come out clean, fed, off drugs, yet say it was a terrible place. Then they would go back to the streets and deteriorate again,” she says. “I wanted to get inside those jails to see what was happening.”

After bringing some of her photographs to a meeting in the early 1990s with Ben McLaughlin, an assistant county sheriff at the time, Lankford was allowed to visit five San Diego County jails, including Las Colinas, where she spent two and a half years photographing and conducting interviews. The resulting book tells a story that is often poignant but also quite bleak. Yet oddly, Lankford misses being at the jail.

“It was bizarrely exciting,” she says. “To these women, I represented the outside and hope. And no matter what, I think we’re all hope addicts.” ——EILENE ZIMMERMAN

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