An Homage to….

Late 2019 I had a routine mammogram that required me to have a fine-needle biopsy. The results were malignant. No nodes were involved but it was a large 4.5cm lump called a ductal carcinoma in situ in my right breast. I freaked out and whilst I was waiting for the results I needed to keep myself occupied so as not to dwell on a worse outcome. The lumpectomy was January 6th 2020 and radiotherapy mid February to mid March.

I decided to make self portraits but I found it incredibly difficult to think conceptually and creatively so I decided to do self portraits and to homage other artists’ work I admire. I did it for myself as I was worried about re-creating these images and how the artists, some of them still alive, would feel about me reproducing them. It really helped me through one of the toughest periods of my life. To be faced with one’s mortality is a strange surreal moment, most of the time I felt like I was out of my head. If any of the artists see these and wish me to remove them from public viewing I will.

I did do a few images of just me as me, but the rest you can guess the artist…

The image “Waiting As Me, intact”, won the 2022 Maggie Diaz Women’s photography prize.

UPDATE: As of 2025 I am now in my last year of twice annual check-ups and if it continues this way I will be clear.

These are the results of the images I made in 2020: