The Journey into the Zone of Breast Cancer / Boaz Tal.

I have been engaged in a research of photography and breast cancer for five years , and the question arises ,why I ,an artist, a photographer, and a man, am preoccupied by breast cancer.

Although it is not immediately obvious, upon closer examination , one can observe that breast cancer embraces many of the same themes that have continued to occupy me in my photography . Themes such as “family”, “male and female roles”, “gender”, “sexuality”, “parents/ children role in the family ” ¹ . All these are themes with which I have dealt extensively in my previous works ,(as exhibited in my solo exhibition at The Israel Museum, Jerusalem,1987)and which require readjustment and relearning by the women who undergo mastectomy due to breast cancer as well as by their families.
 

I realized that for years I had been trying to observe reality from a distant perspective ,trying to explore and understand personal dilemmas through a photographic study . I enlarged some of my photographs (180 x 125cm), as if trying to see better. I dealt with the male identity by producing a series of “self-portraits”.(See photograph “ Self Portrait With My Wife”, 1986) .

Through the series of works “Study of Male and Female” I examined the various attitudes towards dominance in society, and I explored the semantic code which determines “femininity “or “ masculinity”.(See photograph “Self portrait Study of Male and Female 1994).

Within a large body of my work dealing with the role of gender in our culture ,I placed myself in female roles and posed in feminine gestures.

I related to dominance and the perception of what we expect to be “masculine” or perceive to be “feminine”, challenging the viewer’s expectations and attitudes.

I posed myself in a Pieta situation in several variations . The Pietà deals with death and with a phase of being powerless. I am continuing this path ,within the familial experience. A permanent inquiry into the upheavals and the fabric of life we experience.

Illness has never left my family. It surrounds us , constantly. Through my children, through my parents, always accompanied by anxiety, fear and photography.

It was thus only natural for me to decide to undertake breast cancer as a research project , added to the fact that my mother had passed mastectomy in her youth.

I tried to learn and understand the phenomenon under photographic study. It was like leaving on a long journey, not knowing in advance to where it would lead.

For five years I have been undertaking photographs of women who experienced breast cancer.

A powerful station in this journey was finally confronting my own mother’s mastectomy. There she was, in her eighties, almost drained of life, standing before me and my camera, revealing her scar.

But it was too late. But no one said a word in my family. And now it is too late. My father, who is just recovering from a stroke, can no longer speak. She forgets.

I considered how I could contribute to opening up such a possibility for other families, for other couples to communicate openly about their fears, their embarrassment, their anxiety.

Not communicating the problem does not make it disappear. It stays and penetrates every situation and surroundings. It has a powerful ability to devastate.

I believe that when issues are brought up to the level of consciousness, and one is willing to hear, there opens up a path for help and support.

Fighting cancer consumes one’s energy. The effort of keeping it a secret is a waste of one’s most precious commodity – inner psycho-mental energy. I believe that so many issues must be accepted and dealt with: the imperfection of the body; which treatment to choose; one’s new identity. All the surroundings need to accommodate to the presence of this illness. The disease affects the entire family system - partner and children. They all suffer, not only from the physical, concrete events, but because the whole relationship begins to erode. Men and women are both threatened by breast cancer. They both have to work together as a team to defeat this devastation.

Obtaining open communication by using the power of art is the aim of my work.

I engage art in this battle, and demand its contribution to expanding the public’s awareness of breast cancer and creating an open space for a dialogue. I agree with Dissanayake’s (1995) ideas exposed in her book- “Conversations before the end of time” that artists should have use their skills in ways that could have a direct effect on life. Artists should engage in “art for life’s sake” instead of doing “art for art’s sake”.

Breast cancer is a universal threat; and its only prevention - early detection. Changing attitudes towards breast cancer in public and bringing it to the focus of the public agenda is essential. Photography have the power to open another channel of communication.

I invite the viewer to take an active part - by exposing themselves to my visual project in order to be aquatinted with to expect to ; The unknown is always the most frightening situation in the human being existence. There is the possibility to gain acquaintance with how others have attempted to “make it better”.

We must not forget artists who had experienced breast cancer and who were the first to undertook it in their art , bravely . Jo Spence , (1982) Matuschka (1993), ,Deena Mettzger,(1980) have undertaken breast cancer as a theme of their art work. It was also part of a therapeutic process, practicing what Aristotle calls “ the power of art in maintaining the inner psychological harmony” .

My project aims to contribute to seeing. As Walton, L.K. (1984), says in his writing “Transparent Picture: on the Nature of Photographic Realism”, that the special nature of photography must be thought as a contribution to the enterprise of seeing. “Photographs are transparent. We see the word through them. The viewer of the photograph sees the scene that was photographed. Through the pictures we see the world. Seeing is a way of finding out about the world”.

I tried to observe breast cancer through my eyes, “the masculine gaze”.

I made equal efforts to understand the “feminine gaze”; the feminine perception of the subject. It was accomplished by conversations, and by their involvement in the process before and after the photographs were taken. Sometimes their partner was involved too. All the women who came to my studio shared the same aim- to contribute and arise the awareness towards breast cancer in public.

The media and advertising create freely what they assume we want to see. Sex and identity become constructed from externally imposed images. Both genders internalize this truth, and both are manipulated in the same way to believe it is “the truth”. Both are the slaves of a compulsive set of codes and norms. Our époque who uses the image to impose what is perceived to be feminine, masculine ,bor needed, has to treasure other visual information as well.

I engaged myself to exhibit the breast cancer visual information I gathered , which piles on to the other art works I’ve done ,trying to assist this painful situation and its vast complexity of emotions called life.

“…. As a spectator I was interested in photography only for “sentimental “ reasons: I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound: I see I feel, hence I notice, I observe and I think..”⁴ ( Ronald Barthes, “Camera Lucida” pp. 21 )