Therapeutic love
“Those who rub shoulders with me, see me smile.
He who loves me, sees me suffer.
My friends don’t see me fret.
My husband knows when I break down.
Their gaze, the reflection of the soul, has changed.
The gaze of my beloved continues to transcend me.
Some aren’t there, some are no longer there.
He comforts me every day.
His presence, his support are the most beautiful proof of love.
His shoulder is the privileged partner of my joys.
It naturally comforts my sadness.
He knows me well, he knows me so well.
His gaze is full of kindness.
He is there for me, to back me up in this fight.
This fight is our shared ordeal.
Our love is our bond in order to conquer together.
Him, me.
We two, forever.”
—Sophie

“When I was told I had the disease, I fervently wished that it was all just a bad dream. As a response, Tolkien’s words from The Lord of the Rings then came to mind: “…so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
To extricate ourselves from time, we’d sketched a crazy and gaily-colored painting. From suffering and struggle, peacefulness and beauty slowly germinated. Using water as a medium seemed obvious to us. Water gives life; it heals. It offered us spellbinding reflections and an amazing face to face encounter with the disease. Water has a universal nature. Affects us all. Each of us, facing ourselves.”
– Magali

Chance, coincidence, or fate?
Michelle and Danielle may wonder about this when they evoke their unexpected reunion. Two cousins, they grew up together, but had lost touch with each other for twenty years. They met up again when having a mammography, right in the middle of the Christmas season. The same verdict for both women: a cancerous tumor.
A strange reunion that seems like a gift with which to cope with this ordeal. Because as a pair they are stronger facing the disease. In this photo, Danielle shows her scar to Michelle, who must undergo the same operation sometime later. Like passing the baton.
Since then, the two cousins, who are inseparable, have their battle cry: “Fight together and testify! Because this can affect us all, both women and men!”

This photo is a self-portrait. I have been living with cancer for ten years now.
This image represents the element that allowed me to change the way I live with the disease. I hid myself behind a multitude of wigs; I didn’t allow myself any lightness because, beware, cancer is serious!
And one day, a little girl named Talia pulled my wig, playing with it, without seeing at all what I was trying to hide. We are all affected in the way that we choose to live or to accompany someone with the disease. As for me, I wanted to show with what strength and courage I managed to lift this weight of my wig to rediscover lightness in my life.

Three generations. A father, a daughter, who is also a mother, her sons, boys who will become men.
This woman is not ill, but like all of us, women and men alike, she is not necessarily shielded from the disease. Cancer, like a tax levied on the happiness of families, can affect us all. The only weapon to fight it: early cancer screening so that it becomes a habit that continues down through generations. Cancer screening is not a battle that only women face, it is everyone’s battle.

I met my friend Christelle, in the center of the photo, through my work as a photographer of theater shows. She’s a cheerful and vibrant person who spreads good vibes galore wherever she goes.
Her disease came as a big shock for a lot of people who followed her artistic or personal life. We had talked about making photos together more than once; but sometimes life makes it hard for people to stick to plans.
The desire to participate in this competition doubtlessly represents everything that is most natural to her.
When she put a message on Facebook saying that she was looking for a photographer for this project, I grabbed the opportunity, which was so perfect to make up for what we hadn’t taken the time to do before. We had a lot of fun and laughs, we spoke a lot and shared much. We also took a few photos.

Diane had two breast cancers. She fought it twice. She conquered it twice. And you don’t win twice all by yourself. We conquer as two, three, together as all those who can help, give a little strength, a little support, a little love, a little of what is needed to not be alone facing two cancers.
She writes: “What you’ll first see in this photo, is a girl and flowers. If you look a little more closely, you will notice a scar under the right breast… That’s what having cancer is: it is initially about passing by unnoticed—most of the time, what’s more—in the street, in bars, at work, and then about revealing a little more when you are ready to come closer. But it is also and above all about beautiful moments with people who are as one with you, a hand on your shoulder, and this lovely photo session, which showed me that I was a pretty, young woman among the flowers, as though my femininity had intensified with these few months.”

I immediately felt concerned by this competition. Perhaps because I’m a woman, or because several of my aunts have already confronted cancer, or perhaps also, because I suffer from polyarthritis, I know the lottery of chronic diseases.
When I researched it more deeply, I discovered the accounts of these young moms who got the news during their pregnancy. Fear about the future, an exceptional moment ruined, the impossibility to breastfeed… Through my photography, I wanted to talk about these women, the mixed and powerful emotions that they may encounter. But I also wanted to talk about their whole families, about these men who support and fight alongside them, of these children who are born during the storm.
An ill mother affects a whole family, and as the family is the basis of our society, this genuinely affects us all.

Karen is a young, wonderful woman, a genuine ray of sunshine. I had the good fortune of meeting her during International Women’s Day, here in Toulouse, last year. She was invited by a group that was honoring five women who had coped with incredible circumstances in their lives.
Karen’s journey through life is worthy of respect, because she confronted, with much courage and determination, breast cancer diagnosed when she was 27 years old, the head of a company, a globetrotter, and a mother of two very young children.
Currently in remission, she continues to have incredible energy, unfailing 'joie de vivre', and her great femininity remains intact. I am proud to have become her friend and to collaborate with her, through this portrait, for this cause that affects us all!

A photographer specializing in therapeutic photography, I deeply wanted to participate in this year’s competition. I hence put out a request on my Facebook page. Marjorie replied to me: she and her daughter Manon had an idea and wanted to present it to me. In their family, breast cancer is very present. Marjorie’s cousin, the mother of little Lola in the photo, died from it five years ago, and smiling Annie also had to cope with it in 1992. The disease affects them all, girl, man, whether they are ill or not… the disease leaves its scars on them in one way or another. They want us to talk about it and for there to be no taboos. For this photograph, they decided to look at cancer from front on and together.

I was barely ten years old when, for the first time in my existence, I saw my mom leave for the hospital, I didn’t know for how long. I was young, my sister was even younger, and my mother had been careful to hide the reason for her hospitalization from us. I only found out a long time later that she’d undergone a double mastectomy, the removal of both breasts. She’d had the choice: have treatment and take the risk or remove everything with the consequences that this entailed in her life as a woman, wife, and mother.
Today she is still here; she doesn’t regret her decision and she would do it again within a heartbeat.
This rather raw photo reflects well the scars of the past, but also the hope and courage necessary to still take advantage of life. It is never simple: the marks are indelible, but to have been faster than the disease today allows my mom to see her children and grandchildren grow up.

“The birth of our daughter Domitille in 2012 brought great happiness. A little princess after our little guy brought his joy two and a half years earlier. A few months later, we learned that I had cancer, which had craftily nourished itself on my pregnancy to rapidly bloom. There was no question of letting myself be pushed around. The battle was on!
So, yes, it “affects us all,” and we were affected, directly and by ricochets. Today, my daughter is six years old; I’m thirty-five. She asks me why my breasts had a fight and whether she will also have “broken” breasts when she’s older.
When my husband took this photo of us, Domtille put her hand on her small torso, on the left-hand side, as though to say, “I know!”, but with a smile. We share a bond with all these women, but also with all these families, children, and friends, who surround us. It’s an amateur photo, taken naturally, with a huge desire to participate, simply to bear witness.”
– Jane

Florence sits with her grandson.
Florence has left us. And although we weren’t prepared, we think it’s important to keep these images of a battle that we thought we’d win.
On this particular day, she was surrounded by her two daughters and her grandson. He came to sit, in a totally natural way, with her for the photo. The tenderness she feels for him at this moment is imbued with her fear of not seeing him grow up. When he leaves her arms, a tear rolls down her cheek.
The photograph isn’t that good on a technical level. There’s no lighting: Flo had trouble coping with it after her chemotherapy sessions. And yet the moment experienced during this short photo shoot was powerful because it symbolized the emptiness that she will leave to her daughters and grandson.

Little Cancer the Crab grows more in these venous branches spread out on all sides than Hippocrates believes.
Although the tumor may become a chimera during radiotherapy, only the physical and loving embrace can dissipate the torture and the muffled screams.
The caring lover eases doubt, and slowly life exits from its rout.

It’s the story of our encounter. An encounter that could have been banal. But you had the audacity and indecency to slip into my daily life without being invited to do so. Since then you entangle yourself in, you intertwine with my life, my pain, fear, anger, and solitude reverberate.
My strength is drawn from the gaze of those who love us. You are my paradox; that which unites and disunites. You isolate us, you make us withdraw into ourselves, you put us face to face! Know that, in the glimmer of this intimacy which binds us in spite of myself, I will break the silence and solitude to rush forward to the magic of new horizons!

March 2018: the unthinkable arrives, for me as well.
I am no longer merely the spectator of the fight of a few of my female friends and of women in this huge world, I am also suffering from the disease.
To suggest rather than show. I timidly pick up my camera, abandoned several months before, to produce a simple image, outside the studio, with Laetitia, a willing friend who lends herself to my vision. A white square to signify emptiness, my emptiness in my right breast, the emptiness inside me. But, beyond this emptiness, there is sweetness, trust, love, kindness, and the hope for recovery. “Breast cancer affects us all!” here reveals to me all its meaning, the meaning of life, so that together we can pass on this message.

“To keep evil spells at bay, we draw scars.” – Maxime Le Forestier
This photo is an extract from a personal project undertaken in 2017 (several exhibitions and Live Photographying) focusing on the body and on letting go thanks to paint that one spreads on the body. It has already been presented and exhibited, but in color. For this competition, I preferred gray tones.
My model, who is very close to me, is the victim of recurring breast cancer. Her first gesture, once she’d dipped her fingers in the paint of her choice, was to mask her scar. Her gesture was delicate and painful both at once, even though the moment was very playful and collaborative.

“Why me? Why now? Young, fit, pregnant. I’d heard about cases of breast cancer around me, but didn’t think it would be something that I would be affected by.
And yet, ten days before giving birth I was told the unthinkable. I found strength through my husband, my four-year-old son, and my baby. We’ve fought this battle together. And dance, which I’ve practiced since a very young age, came to calm and reconnect me to who I truly am, to this body that changes but which is still me.
I hence asked Christelle, who took photos of me during my pregnancy, to immortalize this moment. I hope that in ten years we will look at this photo with much pride.”
– Litzie

My wife is my inspiration and participative model… by which I mean: willing. That “participative” should however be put in quotation marks because my wife never poses. She passes in front of my lens in an entirely natural way. This is very freeing for me and, given that the subject is the body, I can attempt to capture it via a part representing the whole.
This is the backdrop with which we have had to cope with breast cancer and its consequences, breast removal. We have had the grace to be able to face it harmoniously. With a camera in hand, I have pursued my “indiscretions” with, let us say, more responsibility. This photograph is a result of providence; it was offered. I thank my companion for having retained the esthetic and symbolism of this image. She describes it as a proof of love!
Hence, I borrow from “In the splendor of love,” a poem by St. John of the Cross:
“[…] If anything please me
I love it in you,
And what is most like you
To me is most true. […]” (En cet amour sans mesure, in Poèmes)

She no longer looks at herself, naked. It’s as though the image of herself was already a memory, a distant reflection, a black and white photograph in a family photo album.
It was another person who had forged this image of herself in the world. A little girl, perhaps, or another woman.
Since this moment, she’s alone. Confronted by the news, by loss, in front of her own femininity, the pretium doloris is already her sickness. This is what she seems to want to say, scream, cry to life that continues there outside. To make it affect us all. And, yet, she is alone, and already she no longer sees herself naked.

We are mothers, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends… breast cancer affects us all. For my mother, it was a bilateral mastectomy, without reconstruction, several years ago. It is a woman’s body affected but determined, this body that links me to her. I highlight it in this photograph, by revealing what she never dared show. Through this image where time seems frozen, I support her in her femininity, which she no longer dares to speak about. I celebrate her, put her in the spotlight, give her the right to be a woman in a posed portrait, with the blue of Vermeer.

When Julie told me of her project to immortalize her battle against her breast cancer, I immediately accepted to join in this marvelous photographic and humanist adventure.
We had a photo session on the eve of her double mastectomy, then another session when she was undergoing treatment. This is one of the photos resulting from these sessions.
It is a battle that Julie wished to immortalize in order to show her two daughters that one must always fight. She was the one who told me about this competition, and I was the one who chose the photo. We did this hand in hand, in the same way that we approached all the phases of the photo shoot.
I can’t wait for the final session, once this warrior has recovered, documenting her breast construction.

I won’t show you yet. Not ashamed, no, but I don’t want to. Perhaps because we both found it hard. Today, I covered you with jewels because that’s all I have left to make you beautiful and because it’s not our fault. For the moment, I still just need a little more time to reconstruct myself, and then, afterwards, to make you lovelier.
You were already pretty small, you are even smaller now. But later, when you will hurt me less, when the burns are soothed, I will make you suffer again just so that you are both as lovely as each other. It has been difficult, but I’m here. Except that sometimes, I find it slightly hard to recognize myself. Not because of you, no, it’s not that—because I still don’t often look at you—but in my head, something has changed. I’ve withdrawn, shutdown, and I must find the door again that will lead me toward others. Maybe.

No matter the nation, skin color, religion, or a person’s age, this wretched disease that we call “cancer” affects us all, from young people to the very old. It affects us all, but not in the same way: there is “affected” and “living with the disease.” Between the two, there is an abyss.
A person suffering from cancer will be alone facing the battle, as though isolated in the middle of a forest; no notion of “all.”
Of course, the planet is concerned, many people are affected; but when the disease strikes, despite the hands presents to support you, you must withstand the most horrendous solitude. The woman in the photo, my mother, fought alone against the disease, we were only present by her side to love and support her. Despite everything, let us all continue to be affected and all fight together.

In my circle, several women have faced or are still facing this evil that is cancer. The force they deploy has always made an impression on me. And yet, they also cope with doubt, fear, anxiety.
When I saw the theme for the 2018 award, this photograph immediately came to mind. I had met Aurélie through a mutual female friend. Around her, eight closely-knit, motivated women. A lot of emotion during the photo shoot. This project, which was mine, became ours.
I wanted a photograph taken from above. Aurélie’s face stands out in the middle of her close friends, whose faces can’t be seen, but who encircle her, their arms entwined, transferring their energy to her.
I wanted her to be lifted up, carried aloft by this élan.
With this photo, I wanted to show that a sick person who has the good fortune to be surrounded by people who love her can find her strength and determination in them when she feels weak.

An image, two women—two sisters—and this same goal: to face the ordeals fate imposes on us.
Maryline, the youngest, overcame Cancer the Crab’s insidious attack in 2010, just when she was weening her first baby. In 2013, she had to take up the fight again.
Christelle, the elder sister, underwent a battery of tests and learned that she was a carrier of the BRCA1 gene mutation. She then decided to have prophylactic mastectomy, followed by breast reconstruction.
It is a “family affair” that affects us all, whether we are members of the family, relatives, or friends.
In this particular story, sisterly complicity and love are an undeniable proof that, despite all the ordeals, there are now ways of confronting and disarming fate, of surmounting the “inevitable.”

One woman in eight is affected by breast cancer. Solène, stunned, tenderly reflects on this dreadful statistic. As though absent, she ponders these destinies, so often victorious, and these struggles, at times unfairly tragic.
A doubt worms its way into her mind, scares, offends, and wounds her: “Will my body always triumph? Is my beauty just a flash of lightening in an immense dark night?”

Tree of life.
“The disease cast me into a parallel world where, little by little, fear, torment, and pain gave way to intensity, pure and authentic joy, true love, and the beauty of the present moment.
This rebirth was possible thanks to the hands that held, supported, retained, maintained; innocent hands loaded with stories, a veritable human chain. Lovers, children, parents, a sister, female friends, strangers encountered, your gentle and solid hands are the branches of my tree of life.” – Gwénaëlle

This year’s theme “Breast cancer affects us all!” led Yasmina to call me to ask whether we could participate in the competition with the photo that we’d taken of her with her son, shortly after her operation.
She explained to me that she was particularly fond of this photograph. For her, her son was without a doubt the person most affected by the battle that she undertook. It was for him, and thanks to him, that she fought like the sportswoman that she is: with method, determination, and courage.
At each moment, she thought of him above all else. It was for him that she mobilized all her forces and mental focus. To be able to be by his side, to see him grow up. And it is his smile that each day gave her the strength to fight.

Some images don’t require many explanations because the emotion they convey is clear.
Here, an infant breastfeeding—whether the breast has undergone reconstructive surgery or not—is a symbol of life. Without wondering for a moment, the mother makes a gift to her child of what nature had offered her. It seems so obvious, so natural.
The osmosis between this baby and mother, in the ray of natural light, plunges us into the intimacy of this scene. The bath of milk and water symbolizes life and purification in some belief systems.

I recently learned that a close friend had been struck by the disease.
After undergoing breast removal, Claire had started her reconstruction, which involved serious operations.
I wanted to capture two women, a couple, who each fight in their own way against the disease. One is suffering from it; the other accompanies her, knowing that she too could be affected by cancer.
Because they accepted to be photographed nude, in their intimacy, I hence decided that the shoot should take place in their home, as naturally as possible.
To respect their anonymity, I didn’t want to show their faces. Their bodies entwined to show the couple’s extremely close bond: two bodies united to become just one, like a barrage against the disease!
An atrophied breast against an intact breast. No matter! Cancer is a scourge against which we are all led to fight: as people suffering from it, friends, companions, partners, parents, children…

Coping with breast cancer means trying not to overdramatize it, to be strong and, at the same time, to let yourself be supported by your family. You end up losing your mane of hair, feel yourself disappearing at the same as it does.
To produce this photo, I enlisted my daughter’s help. She was playing on the beach the day after a storm; the light was sublime. She played at making her “cape” fly in the wind. I started photographing her, because her presence transferred a lot of energy and joy. The posture of a child with her feet firmly on the ground, the pink scarf in the wind, the hidden face, the juvenile torso, and the colors made me think of a feeling of freedom, a certain humility, of the presence and positivism exuded by our children, so many fundamental notions indispensable to reconstruction and recovery when you have breast cancer.

“This woman… is my mother!” Enzo, my seventeen-year-old son, says.
I’m the photographer and the model. Breast cancer diagnosed in September 2014. My treatment: chemotherapy, mastectomy, radiotherapy, and simply the desire to live.
“Breast cancer affects us all!” Yes, it’s a story men, women, and families share. Everything is shaken up, undermined so as to rethink differently.
I chose a color photograph. I’m of the sun, of the light. I looked at them, as though they were my best friends. In my case, breast cancer was an apprenticeship in life, in the true sense of the term. Nothing is grave any longer; everything is to be lived naturally. A word describes my life today: “resilience.” I’m happier than ever, I feel beautiful and, I would dare say, more than before. I know. Enzo knows… I’ve rediscovered my life, my femininity. I am a mother and a free woman. Life is marvelous!
Many thanks to my son, to our duo. He will look at women and life differently, this is for certain!

And suddenly, the disease takes you hostage.
It has moved its pawn and you must counterattack, sacrifice to this fire that will ravage your body. It’s pointless crying, you must survive.
Your hair is cut, your breast amputated, and yet your smile is the same.
Your beloved eyes, mouth, and lips remain the same. Despite the artifice now gone, your heart is still that of a woman, mother, lover, and your wound is merely the proof of your battle, imbued with your victory.
You can chase away your despair, you’ve returned from war. Your hair will regrow and your scars will be there, right where conquerors wear their medals.

Olivier didn’t hesitate to accept to pose for this project. We take the photos at his place. His partner, who is present at the photo shoot, talks about gynecomastia: his mammary gland is abnormally developed and, because of this fact, he is at risk of the disease.
Olivier is ready. I hold out the prothesis that my wife willingly lent us for the session. She underwent a mastectomy of her left breast a little more than a year ago. She is now in the final phase of treatment—breast reconstruction—with a sense of relief and a certain level of impatience. Her older sister and mother have also been affected by the disease and have undergone treatment with the same effective results.
The shoot is over; I go home. There are eleven homes in the small street where I live. My wife points out that more than half the neighboring mothers have been affected by the disease. “Breast cancer affects us all”: women, men, blacks, whites, partners, the young and less young. All of us.

In a society where we women are expected to be in all places at once, it is difficult to think of ourselves.
We are a mother, wife, female friend, worker, cab for the kids, housewife, attentive listener. There is no space for our main role, the basis for all these other roles: that of a woman. A woman in good health who takes care of herself. Taking the time to go to her gynecologist for cancer screening tests is often the last thing on her list. And yet, this cancer can affect all women. Even the best moms, best wives, best of female friends.
Let us become aware that it affects us all by going to have cancer screening tests in the middle of our very busy schedules.

“My name is Amélie, I’m thirty-two years old and I have been suffering from a metastatic cancer for four years. This disease has always affected my life; my grandmother endured it when she was forty-five years old. I’ve hence been aware of this burden since I was little, and when I became ill, I realized that it doesn’t only have an impact on my life, but also on the lives of people close to me, my husband, my family, and my friends. They therefore didn’t hesitate to strip during the photo session to show me their support. They bring me the strength I need to fight day after day and are indispensable to my recovery.
Through this photograph, I wanted to emphasize how much the support of loved ones is primordial. I thank them for this proof of love and friendship. I thank my photographer for having accepted this project and for having produced this photo full of emotion which says so much about how this disease affects us all.”
– Amélie

I wanted to do the opposite of the shaved female head by choosing that of two men. The image’s estheticism is an artistic choice, and it allows the brutality of the scalp in close-up to be softened, thereby showing the beauty of a naked head so as to eradicate the fear and apprehension of the loss of hair when chemotherapy begins.
This young woman smiles because she feels supported, surrounded, almost protected by her two friends.
I decided to lay masculinity bare for a feminine and universal battle. To make these three beings merge to become only one, like a totem, in a concrete, strong, and solid prayer.

“The pink rose has always been associated with feelings of love and gratitude. This bouquet is my small way of thanking you all, my family and friends, my crutches, my lifelines. You took it in turns to always be beside me, unfailingly available, you were there from the start, you are still here today, you are there in my everyday life, in your own way. You have dried my tears, you have even managed to sometimes make me forget my suffering, you spoiled me with so much attention and care. Here or elsewhere, you mean so much to me. I love you so much.” —Valérie

October 2017. One of the brides who I followed in a photo reportage in June 2017 talks to me, with much emotion, about her sister—here in the photo—who was battling breast cancer.
On the day of the wedding, I hadn’t noticed anything, just two sisters who loved each other very much. I was moved by this account related by S., who conveyed the strength and courage her sister had shown since getting the news about the disease.
While she was right in the middle of breast reconstruction, I suggested to C. that I photograph her fight. For her, this photo session was one more phase in her journey. The latest news: C. continues her reconstruction. She’s doing well.