The SCAR project: portraits of young breast cancer survivors

Photographer David Jay's SCAR Project is described as "a series of large-scale portraits of young breast cancer survivors," intended to raise awareness about early onset breast cancer while "paying tribute to the courage and spirit of so many brave young women."

Dedicated to the more than 10,000 women under the age of 40 who will be diagnosed this year alone, The SCAR Project is an exercise in awareness, hope, reflection and healing. The mission is three-fold: raise public consciousness of early-onset breast cancer, raise funds for breast cancer research/outreach programs and help young survivors see their scars, faces, figures and experiences through a new, honest and ultimately empowering lens.

You can view more images here (websurfing-while-at-work content advisory: most contain female frontal nudity, and, of course, surgical scars).

There's a book, available here. And there's an interview with Jay about the SCAR project at FOTOJORNO.

As regular readers may know, this project is relevant to my interests.

(via @josephsyen)

• [NrdyGrl]

  Hauntingly beautiful.  What strong amazing women.  My heart broke when I saw the first picture of the young woman with a solitary tear running down her cheek.  Cancer is such a fucker.  

• [Donna Maderer]

  Jesus, those shots are absolutely tremendous!  I want my Jen to see them but worry that it’s too soon (a week and change post op). While it’s important to keep our spirits up it’s also mega huge important to grieve the loss of part of ourselves. Yeah, NOW our chances of survival are much, much improved but still.

   Too bad that can’t be neatly scheduled “I’ll take the Thursday 1PM Grief slot. K?”
  My update on Jen plus her illustration:
  http://donna-tellmeastory.blogspot.com/2012/02/post-boobectomy-post.html

• [teedoff]

  The love of my life, and by extension myself, are suffering from this right now.  FUCK CANCER!
  There always seems to be enough money to have troops in foreign lands, but not enough money to find out why this crap is affecting more and more people each year.

  On another note. Let’s skip the ethnocentrism Boing Boing. Few of us go to the grave wrapped in a flag, so stop kidding yourself that only 10K women under the age of 40 get this diagnosis each year. You are talking about yank numbers.

  • [Lexica]

     That’s a direct quote  from the website, not something written by Xeni or another BoingBoinger. If you’re going to criticize somebody for being ethnocentric, aim your criticism at the right person.

    • [teedoff]

      Fair enough, but you’d have to be a US citizen not to cringe when quoting something like that. No big deal though. The topic is more important.

• [That_Anonymous_Coward]

  A very important message on that page is…
  Breast Cancer is not a Pink Ribbon.

  The images are strong, powerful and a great reminder that it isn’t people in fun pink shirts at a walk… that there is a toll on each of these women and those that love them.  Hopefully work like this will get people to stop supporting “Awareness” charities, and get money to people who are actively working on combating the disease and making sure every woman can be screened. 

• [Adjam Oliver]

  Stay strong Xeni!

• [Jim Huinink]

  Reminds me very much of Photosensitive’s Cancer Connections: http://www.photosensitive.com/cc/

• [Russ McClay]

  The portraits certainly portray the angst and agony of cancer; but I can’t help but think that a different style of portraiture could present the happier side of survival of these women. I guess what I would like to see is these same photos juxtaposed to these same women fully clothed, smiling and in flattering lights and color.

  • [blueelm]

    We get that. All the time. What no one wants to hear is that it hurts and sucks.

  • [Origami_Isopod]

    Go read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Welcome to Cancerland.” Blueelm is right: Cancer sucks, and survivors don’t owe it to you to be all ~~positive~~ so you don’t feel so damned uncomfortable.

• [macinnis]

   Xeni, very powerful pictures. My mom had breast cancer 20 years ago. I gave her a hug last night.

• [ullli23]

  Very impressive pictures!

• [Kludgegrrl]

  I was really struck by the beauty of these women; these *are* flattering pictures, which really highlight the resolution of the subjects to live, despite the losses that cancer has imposed upon them. 

  My mom, who battled lung cancer for fifteen years, had grotesque scars around her torso (from where they removed first, a lobe of her lung, and then her entire lung).  She thought it was pretty gross, frankensteinish, but she was also proud of it, because it was a scar now — it had healed and she was still living, which was worth far more to her.  

  I think that the image of the pregnant woman, who has lost both her breasts but will soon become a mother, is an especially poignant testimony to the costs and rewards of fighting against this disease.  I would say that they are courageous women to bare their bodies to the camera, but really their courage is clearly far greater than that.

• [nixiebunny]

  I’m glad to see a few partners in these photos. Some men leave their wives after such a diagnosis – I know of one. I can’t imagine doing that. 

• [SomeGuyNamedMark]

  Thanks for posting this.  No, it isn’t all pink ribbons and walk-a-thons.  I especially like the ones with their partners sticking with them.

  I wonder if there is some way to  do these types of surgeries with less severe scarring?

  • [Xeni Jardin]

    I wonder if there is some way to do these types of surgeries with less severe scarring?

    I don’t know about each of these women’s cases, but some of what you are seeing is people who have not had reconstructive surgery. Some women choose not to, for a host of reasons that vary by case.

    But more broadly, oh, how I agree. The way we “fix” breast cancer is barbaric, brutal, and it an outrage that the best we can do with this fucking disease, in this advanced age of technology is the hell of chemotherapy, and the kind of surgery these women have had to face. 

    I now count myself among them.

• [Mister44]

  Wow. Very raw and moving.

• [Chang Terhune]

  That’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever witnessed.  Thank you.

• [oneantler]

  I love everything about this project. The photographs are piercing, beautiful, unbelievably moving. I crawled through David Jay’s entire SCAR project webpage and watched the clip of the documentary that aired on Style. As I watched I couldn’t help but find irritating the digital blurring (by Style, I assume) of a remaining nipple. No need to censor breasts that have been mangled by our clumsy, relatively barbaric surgical methods! There are no female nipples left and therefore they don’t count as breasts anymore. The project site points out that these women find empowerment and reclaim their sexuality as they participate in these photo shoots. The censorship, though subtle, underscores how difficult that can be.
  Still, I wouldn’t want that to keep the documentary off the air. It’s too important.

• [accidentatstercolinem]

  What a lot of young women! And there I was feeling sorry for myself that this happened to me at 46. It’s so sad to see such young people having to go through it. 

  Some guidelines say that women need not get a mammogram before age 50. And some guidelines say that women don’t need to be taught to do self-exams.  All I can say is, if I had done regular self-exams, I would have picked it up myself.  I didn’t, but thank goodness I had a mammogram before age 50. That would have been too late.   

  Hang in there, Xeni!

• [Buddy Bradley]

  Very disturbing and very moving. I’m glad I looked at the site and I’m glad it exists for others to look at.