E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSSGraphic Warning: This post contains images which some viewers may find disturbing.
Life.com reports: SCAR Project - Breast Cancer Exposed
What started out as an effort aimed at raising awareness about young women with breast cancer has turned into something more beautiful, more provocative and more revealing than fashion photographer David Jay could have imagined. By taking portraits of his subjects and their scarred chests, Jay unlocked a visual world few have seen where grace, guts, pain, and femininity all cross paths to expose a deeply moving side of humanity. LIFE.com spoke to Jay about the culmination of his work -- a book called The SCAR Project -- and about the raw, hard-hitting images that reveal another side of this national epidemic. Editor's note: The pictures on Life.com contain nudity.
David Jay / LIFE.com
Jill, 28 years old
"Breast cancer changed me, but it did not make me a better or worse person. I will never know who I might have been had I not gone through this experience. All I know is that the person that I have become has amazing strength and courage mixed with heartfelt sadness and fear."
David Jay / LIFE.com
Cary, 33 years old
"I participated in The SCAR Project because I believe that these powerful images can reach people in a way that words cannot. If one young woman does a self-exam after looking at my photo or one doctor sends a patient for a "just to be sure" scan, then exposing myself for art becomes a life-saving proposition," she says in the book.
Related links:
Leave a Comment:
beautiful pictures of two beautiful ladies, really gorgeous! The affect of the first woman is almost of freedom, almost like liberation. Really wonderful.
Radical surgery aside, these are two beautiful ladies! The guy (or girl) that gets to love on them is a very lucky person.
What beautiful, glamorous women!
Freedom, Freedom, Freedom......... Bravo Sisters!
Sometimes an image can express what words cannot.
Wonderful work ladies!
2 Hotties with Naughty Bodies!!! Ahooo!!! Ruff! Ruff!!!
beautiful photos! Great job!
I checked out all the photos on The Scar Project website. All of these women are brave, strong, and gorgeous! I respect and admire all the women who participated in this project. What beautiful, compassionate, enlightening photography from David Jay!
Thank you. My sister is a breast cancer survivor. Thank you.
Disgusting. I empathize with and support victims/survivors of breast cancer, but to take unfortunate things that happen to people and then shove them in people's faces as some "alternative form of beauty" is just f'd up. Smash your camera please.
You didn't have to look.
Who "shoved" it in your face and held your eyes open? The only thing disgusting is your comment. You need to grow up.
I applaud these ladies strength, determination, and character for their efforts to save other women from similar radical surgery.
Beautiful women. I have few friends that have been through similar situations. Some decided for implants and others did not. Either way, they are survivors and beautiful.
One negative thing, I hate when usually men make a a quick judgement about women's breast. Hey, I guess they don't know.
But you go girls! xox
What brave, beautiful, and liberated women, who seem to get it. Despite our male fascination with breasts, I think we all really know deep inside that it is not the breasts that make the woman, it is the woman behind the breasts that makes the woman. Good for you, for the project founders, and for their brave, sensual, and oh so generous subjects.
I must say that doctors have improved a lot on reducing scar tissue, they are still beautiful women.
Those photos are amazing, and to call them disgusting is saying that these brave women cant feel like they are able to show their bodies, and feel beautiful. Photography is all about capturing that single moment into a persons soul, and that photographer did just that.
Those photos are amazing. As a woman with a lump in her breast waiting on the diagnosis, I now know what I am going to do. Before I saw these, I was going to at least have a lumpectomy and possibly radiatiion, but not now. Not after seeing these. I plan to cancel my doctor appointment and just hope that the death isn't too agonizing. God, how I wish I had not see them.
I hope you were just having a bad day, Mary. Having experienced a lumpectomy, chemo and radiation I can assure you that it's worth it. People who don't know me can't tell, and my scar is hidden on the edge of my areola. I can't imagine not being this strong woman I've become, after you've faced death not much scares you.