This post is also available in:
My photographic work has always focused on portraying women, at all stages of their lives, through all the trials they face. Illness is one of them.
Breast cancer accounts for nearly 33% of all female cancers, making it the most common. This struck me as crucial.
As part of my graduation project, I contacted organizations to take portraits of women who have lived through this disease. I wanted to represent them and gather their stories.
Coming face to face with their pain initially felt like a brutal, even violent encounter. But as our conversations progressed, I came to understand the full extent of what this disease entails. As a woman, I felt deeply moved. Breast cancer goes far beyond physical suffering: it challenges women’s identity, femininity, and the relationship they have with their bodies. Treatments can have devastating consequences, like extreme fatigue, pain, physical changes, and psychological distress.
It was with this realization that I chose to use my photography to support these women. My intention is not to confine them within an artificial setting, but rather to respect their realities. In this way, I explore a dual intimacy: that of their living spaces and that of their bodies. These portraits, taken in Paris and its surroundings, span different social backgrounds, as illness affects everyone without distinction.
It was essential to me that each woman be able to recount her experience in her own words. The choice of a handwritten letter emerged as both an intimate and sincere form of expression, a sensitive way for their voices to be part of this. My goal is to show, to let people read and help them understand, to affirm that these women’s bodies exist fully, beyond the disease.
