JMA PHOTOGRAPHY

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

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.

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).

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.