Cancer: A thousand perspectives
May 29, 2010
Antonia Zerbisias
FEATURE WRITER
Standing there in the dark, hugging his bare torso, David Harris both challenges and shrinks from his own camera’s gaze.
He posed half-naked because, if there are women cancer survivors brave enough to reveal what’s left of their breasts, he could at least take off his shirt.
“I had my shorts on. At least that part is working fine,” he explains via email, his preferred means of communication after four major surgeries for throat cancer.
Harris managed to escape cancer’s death grip — although it squeezed him hard, the way it squeezes so many.
At some point, two out of five of us will hear a doctor use words we never want to hear: melanoma, neuroma, sarcoma, glioma . . .
But it isn’t always a death sentence.
That’s evident in Cancer Connections, some 1,000 black-and-white images showing the tears, torment and triumph, the scars, strength and spirit of cancer survivors.
In partnership with the Canadian Cancer Society, the exhibit is by PhotoSensitive, a non-profit collective of photographers who use their cameras for social commentary.
It has travelled the country since opening in Toronto two years ago. On Tuesday, it returns to Ontario for a 10-day exhibit in Ottawa’s Major’s Hill Park.
Says PhotoSensitive co-founder Andrew Stawicki, “People want to talk, they want to share their experiences with cancer.”
And share they do, in some of the starkest ways.
In Harris’s self-portrait, the editor and publisher of Huntsville Online, unlike those women who wear their mastectomies like Amazons wore their armour, he is cloaked in his vulnerability.
“I wanted to show the price you have to pay sometimes for a chance at a little more life on this planet,’’ he says. “I remember at the beginning of my journey going into Princess Margaret (Hospital) and seeing patients with their jaw half missing and thinking, what a horrible disfigurement.
“Little did I know that I too would end up as a surgical freak.”
For Thunder Bay photographer Patte Foreman, who had been photographing women with cancer since the project’s start, the situation is uncertain. Recently told she has Stage 1 cervical cancer, she’s now waiting for a final diagnosis.
“It’s ironic that, here I’d been part of this show, part of this cause for two years and now I am one of the participants,” she says over the phone.
The most striking of Foreman’s images is of her daughter’s classmate, Elysha Blacker, who flirts with the camera, her corn snake Lila slithering around her bald head.
“She had a fear of snakes; getting a snake was part of her conquering her fears,” recalls Foreman. “Never for a moment did she wasn’t going to make it.”
For others, it wasn’t so certain.
In 2006, Toronto construction developer Alex Lawson was on the edge, at the end, with liver cancer. He deteriorated so quickly that it looked as if he wouldn’t survive long enough for a transplant.
That’s when his sister Tracey Allan stepped up with part of her liver.
“The picture tells our story,” says Lawson of the shot by Dick Loek.
Loek himself has had two cancer diagnoses — a malignant melanoma and prostate cancer.
“I can identify with the scare you get when the doctor tells you,” he says. “It’s a horrible thing to hear.”
But maybe not quite as horrible as hearing that your 17-month-old daughter has a large tumour in her tiny chest.
That’s what happened to Waterloo photographer Jennifer Gillespie when she and her husband Chris learned that their little girl needed major surgery.
“You just don’t want to believe it; you just can’t believe it,” she recalls of that terrible time when Breanna was hospitalized for weeks.
Now she is as healthy, happy and active as any 4 year old.
And so, a thousand photographs that one would think would be painful to look at — and, yes, some are difficult — instead convey hope and courage.
They reach into your hearts and, the participants hope, compel you to reach into your pockets for cancer research.
Exhibit details
WHO: Cancer survivors from all walks of life and all parts of Canada.
WHAT: Cancer Connections, a free, traveling exhibit of nearly 1,000 photographs aimed at engaging Canadians in conversations about cancer.
WHEN: June 1-10, 2010
WHERE: Major's Hill Park, Ottawa
WHY: To raise Canadian consciousness about cancer and funds for research
For more information: www.PhotoSensitive.com/cc/