Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Battle We Didn't Choose: Breast Cancer Photography Exhibit



Photographer Angelo Merendino chronicled his young wife's breast cancer journey in a series of photographs which are currently on exhibit in a wonderful space, a former church, on the east side of Cleveland.

I first read about this exhibit when controversy erupted some weeks ago about its placement at The Gathering Place, an organization and facility which offers all kinds of education and support for cancer patients and their loved ones.  Many of The Gathering Place's clients and friends protested its showing an exhibit in which the stark realities of day-to-day life with cancer are depicted.  They found it depressing and disheartening to walk into a place of support and hope only to be greeted by these graphic reminders of serious illness and death.  And yes, Jen Merendino did die.

Angelo has written about The Gathering Place's decision to close the exhibit, and several other related articles and posts appear on his Facebook page.  That's not my issue: I have long understood that my desire to know about and to see birth and death up close are not universally appreciated.  Those great transitions of human life have a claim on my curiosity and imagination that is shared by few people, and my wonder at photography and what it conveys seems to be unlimited.  I never found childbirth photos "gross," and I do not find pictures of illness to be depressing or horrifying.

What I saw in this exhibit was the power of love and the strength of human courage. 

And sometimes, the lack of the latter ~ but then, that is part of the human experience as well.  There is a moving series of photographs entitled "Reactions" that should give us all pause.  They were taken in public places, out on the street.  Jen moves through the scenes, a frail and bald woman grasping a walker, while the faces of those she passes are recorded by the camera.  Curiosity, surprise, distaste, rejection.  I remarked to the exhibitor that in not one of those photographs do we see a stranger reacting with a friendly, welcoming face.

In my favorite photo, Jen is seated, I believe in a window, wearing a dress and painting her toenails.  Her hair is gone, her body is thin, and a cane rests nearby.  You cannot miss understanding that this is a woman in great crisis exerting the power of color and beauty over pain and sadness. 

The woman who owns the gallery ~ yes! an artist purchased this abandoned sacred building so that she could house art exhibits ~ and I talked for a long time.  She lost her first husband to suicide several years ago, and so we were able to talk candidly about how losses of such magnitude change who we are and how we respond to life, and to death.   

I have often mentioned my frustration with the remark "I can't imagine" that comes my way so often.  I believe now that in saying those words people are simultaneously expressing sympathy and erecting a wall of protection around themselves.  We all do care for and love each other, but we don't want to imagine, much less know, the day to day trauma of the lives of others. 

For those who are brave enough to learn this particular walk, these images are a treasure.








11 comments:

  1. What a beautiful and most appropriate space for exhibiting art for art is a sacred language of the soul. Thank you also for your comments as I learn so much from your honest reflections.

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  2. This comment came through on my email but didn't post. I thought it was so completely true that I would rectify Blogger's miss. From Susan:

    Those images are truly beautiful. I was expecting much worse, truthfully. Maybe only after you have walked through cancer with someone you love can you think that, but I see his love for her so clearly. I see who she is. Cancer is not the star of these photos.

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  3. I always thought that telling someone, "I know how you feel" or "I understand your what you're going through" was insulting, if one indeed had never been through what the other person is experiencing. This is the genesis of my "I can't imagine..." when I speak to or about someone else's pain. It has never been an attempt to protect myself from anything, as far as I know.

    I can sort of understand cancer patients who have been conditioned to "fight" and not consider the possibility of a less-than-victorious outcome objecting to a graphic pictorial history of a battle lost. I blame this more on the medical culture surrounding cancer treatment than on the individual patients...

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    1. Well, as you probably know, I hate the battle metaphor and the use of words such as "victory" or "defeat" with respect to cancer. If I were inclined to use them, I suppose that I would always do so in terms of the victories of courage, insight, compassion, strength; little things like that.

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    2. Absolutely. We tend to define "victory" as "cure" when speaking about any disease. We don't think about other character-molding results of dealing with chronic or life-threatening illness, which are "victories" themselves...maybe even THE victory.

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    3. Strange - even though I went to see it and typed the title myself, the word "battle" didn't even register. The exhibit is much more the story of a journey, to my way of seeing it.

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  4. It was a powerful and poignant. I wish I lived near by so I could see it first hand.

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  5. I just read this post, AFTER writing "I can't imagine" in my comment on the post above. I said it because I'm aware that, though both of us are mothers of children who have died, I can't know your particular experience as I do my own. For example, I do not know what it's like to have the news delivered suddenly (apart from the shock of diagnosis); I don't know what it's like to have an older child - an adult child - die. So I guess it is a term of respect for the uniqueness of your experience, for your own personal response, for your family unit - for all the things that are uniquely yours. I do not think that I don't want to understand, but I take your point that this may be true for some.

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    1. Yes, I am probably too harsh. I have definitely lost the capacity for empathy in some respects - maybe I never had it to begin with. Marissa is much better and more generous than I at seeing what others try to offer.

      For me, that sudden news: it's as if the earth was jolted off its axis and everything began to slide off. As I lay in bed this morning and read your comments, I looked out the window at a beautiful sunny morning and thought: how odd it is that the trees and houses all appear to be bolted to the ground, because I know that, in truth, nothing is.

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  6. What an eloquent way of expressing an inexplicable feeling. I think you should consider putting that last paragraph into your book, Robin. Sending hugs to you.

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