One in Nine

A photographic exploration of breast cancer, its treatment and survival. One in nine women will contract breast cancer in South Africa. This is a modified statistic as it takes into account the high prevalence of HIV and TB that raises the mortality rate of our population. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008 and this project was made in response to my illness, its treatment and my survival. I am the 'one in nine' and by becoming the active subject of my own investigation, it helped me to understand my own condition and integrate it into my life.

Susan Sontag wrote when diagnosed with breast cancer, "the disease itself arouses thoroughly old-fashioned kinds of dread. Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious".

As a documentary photographer, I have always positioned myself relating to and interacting with my subjects. I document other small communities, the marginal people. Suddenly, through my illness I became a member of a marginal group. My way of coping with this was to analyse my own story through images, which helped me to reach out for solidarity from others who, like myself had at some point during their illness felt outside the experience of everybody else.

Through creating self-portraits that I took during my illness and portraits of eight other breast cancer survivors, I have used photography as a tool to explore the world around me and it has worked as a visual diary. Their eight portraits, together with my own symbolically represent "one in nine". The story is about medical body transformations, changes in thoughts and feelings around our identity, new ways of living with death (instead of fearing it) and most of all, stories about survival.

By exhibiting this work, I hope to deepen the knowledge about breast cancer and show that the value of trauma is a chance to find oneself.