We are aware of breast cancer, we see the pink ribbons on products and on cars, we do our self-exams, but unless you’re a person who has been through it or know someone else who has the chances are you probably haven’t seen it in the way photographer David Jay shows it in a book called The SCAR Project: in blunt, beautiful, black and white portraits of its survivors.
Some of the pictures, warns MSNBC, might be disturbing, but then, they also might be—well, are—inspiring, humbling and important. Life magazine ran 20 of Jay’s photos from the SCAR Project, which began when he photographed his girlfriend’s twin sister. She had a mastectomy after being diagnosed at the age of 29.
Jay told the magazine, “All I see out there is these pink ribbons that really don’t seem to do justice to the actual problem,” and the actual problem is, Life writes, that “According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in U.S. women this year; approximately 39,520 will die from the disease.”
These elegant photos have a force that even words like that can’t seem to convey. Portrait subject Cary, 33, says in the book, “If one young woman does a self-exam after looking at my photo or one doctor sends a patient for a ‘just to be sure’ scan, then exposing myself for art becomes a life-saving proposition.”
Done. Thank you.
Some of the pictures, warns MSNBC, might be disturbing, but then, they also might be—well, are—inspiring, humbling and important. Life magazine ran 20 of Jay’s photos from the SCAR Project, which began when he photographed his girlfriend’s twin sister. She had a mastectomy after being diagnosed at the age of 29.
Jay told the magazine, “All I see out there is these pink ribbons that really don’t seem to do justice to the actual problem,” and the actual problem is, Life writes, that “According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated 230,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in U.S. women this year; approximately 39,520 will die from the disease.”
These elegant photos have a force that even words like that can’t seem to convey. Portrait subject Cary, 33, says in the book, “If one young woman does a self-exam after looking at my photo or one doctor sends a patient for a ‘just to be sure’ scan, then exposing myself for art becomes a life-saving proposition.”
Done. Thank you.
My wife is a 19 year breast cancer survivor. There is no way to tell others how important the self exams are. She caught hers early, and only needed a lumpectomy and not a mastectomy. She does have a scar from the lymph nodes being removed, which is fairly nasty looking, but not enough to bother me. I am very glad that we got it looked at and taken care of as soon as we did. One word of caution would be that "Doctors do what they are trained to do." That means a surgeon will always want to cut, even if a less drastic surgery will do. We had to really talk to convince our surgeon that a lumpectomy was better. Always get a second opinion on the results! Preferrably from a different hospital, and one that specialises in cancer treatment. We did, and they did find the cancer in the lymph nodes that were missed originally. That is what really saved my wife's life. She got the ckemo and the radiation that she needed, but no further surgery.
It's frightening how young some of the women in those photographs are.