Mammographies: The Cultural Discourses of Breast Cancer Narratives by DeShazer Mary K

Author:DeShazer, Mary K.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Published: 2018-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

These photographs depict two different breast cancer aesthetics, political stances, and subject formations: Metzger presents herself as healthy and exuberant, her post-mastectomy breast as natural in its unreconstructed state; Matuschka, in contrast, presents her post-operative body as disfigured yet elegant, deserving to be seen.

Matuschka's other important predecessor, British photographer Jo Spence, gained public recognition in the United Kingdom during the 1980s for depicting her breasts pressed down during mammograms and Marked Up for Amputation—an ironic photographic title, since she refused the mastectomy her surgeon recommended in favor of lumpectomy. In another photo from this series she wryly labels her left breast Property of Jo Spence? With psychologist Rosie Martin, Spence developed techniques of photo-therapy still used to assist patients struggling to counter traumatic experiences. The emphasis in Spence's cancer photographs is neither Metzger's joy nor Matuschka's sobriety but rather a trenchant critique of a sexist culture that fetishizes breasts and a medical Page 122 → system that often objectifies patients.4 Dykstra notes these differences between the self-portraiture of Matuschka and Spence.

Many of Matuschka's photographs have a polished, fine arts look about them. Despite their subject matter, they are often beautiful to look at. Spence's photographs, on the other hand, are often snapshot-like, in-your-face documents of her rage and feelings of powerlessness. Matuschka's images suggest a reevaluation of definitions of a beautiful body, and they radiate a kind of pride in a still-beautiful body. Spence's photographs and the pointed, articulate text that accompanies them are interrogations not only of conventions of beauty and the female body, but of codes of representation, constructions of disease, and explorations of identity. Perhaps most significantly, they demand that viewers become aware of the visual codes that construct ideas of gender, sexuality, class, illness and the kind of body that is “fit to be seen.” (4)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.