UNDER 40 ALT — JMA PHOTOGRAPHY

**Molly** Stage 2, Triple Negative, BRCA1+

UNDER 40 is a photographic series centering individuals who have received a breast cancer diagnosis before the age of 40—the age at which the USPSTF currently recommends beginning routine screening for breast cancer. The number of pink balloons represents how many years each person was younger than 40 at the time of diagnosis.

if you’re interested in participating the UNDER 40 project, please fill out the Participation Form to be notified of future sessions

**Laura** Stage 3, Triple Negative with recurrence, and **Ruby**

The nuance of living, let alone living with a life-altering diagnosis.
The duality of that disease taking precedence over one’s life and not wanting to be defined by it.
The tension between the whimsy & weightlessness of the balloon and the heft of cancer.

**Nicole** Stage 1, Triple Positive with recurrence

So often, photographs of survivors make spectacle of scars, and—while poignant—this has the potential to reduce the subject to their diagnosis, contributing to reductive narratives—both internally and communally—about the aesthetics of disease and treatment (e.g. the visual of a double mastectomy with no reconstruction somehow being braver or more powerful or just 'more' than a fully healed reconstruction, than a lumpectomy scar, than no scars at all).

**Anna** Stage 1, HR+/HER2- with recurrence

These sessions do not focus on physical signifiers of disease or recovery, rather they create space for creative self-expression in the hopes of humanizing a statistic that remains abstract until it becomes a personal reality. I want to raise awareness of the prevalence of breast cancer in young people, and I want to give survivors opportunities to feel seen in all their humanity, beyond their value in bringing awareness to this disease.

I want to capture moments in time of beautiful people; may they inspire those recently diagnosed lacking examples of a beautiful future, may they encourage us to picture these faces next time we read a headline about rising death rates, may they create in us an appreciation for the inherent value of each individual life.

**Anna** Stage 2A, Triple Positive with recurrence

These sessions are the accumulation of work on a project I have been thinking about for three years. There is great irony in the fact that, in producing a photographic series aimed at awareness, I was not prepared for the overwhelming response I received from folks who had been diagnosed young and wanted to be involved. Twenty minute sessions were offered across two days in a Manhattan studio, with seventeen people committing to the project. Many of these participants were complete strangers to me prior to our correspondence about the project, and I had twenty minutes with each of them. My hope is that I’m able to continue this living archive with one or two studio days a year, and to be able to offer them in other cities.