Mom, 2023
On the morning before her double mastectomy, my mother told me, “I feel like I am saying goodbye to my womanhood." In the midst of excruciating yet life-saving cancer treatment, what does it feel like to lose a physical part of yourself? In a society that has determined our identity and self-worth are irrevocably tied to our bodies, how do cancer patients retain or reimagine their sense of self through illness and treatment?
Drawing on narrative interviews with breast cancer patients and survivors across the Bay Area, Body & Face is a process-driven series of portraits examining patients' relationships with the self and the body. In a novel photographic process which reinvents the conventional relationship between photographer and subject, participants are given the agency to photograph themselves, revealing insights into their self-image and producing portraits that are freshly empowering. By giving these patients a new power in the artistic process, Body & Face centers participants to communicate complex narratives of illness experiences and explore the way collaborative portraiture can be an opportunity for healing.
Interview excerpts, 2023
Ariana, 2023
Sandy, 2023
Christina, 2023
Ruthie, 2023
Marina, 2023
Yvonne, 2023