Photojournalist - Susan Markisz - Behind the Viewfinder

PAIN, LOSS, REDEMPTION

I was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 10 years ago.

Six months after my mastectomy and chemotherapy, as my body resumed a more normal shape, minus a breast, and my hair began to grow back to its natural state, now a little more gray, I embarked on a series of self portraits to document the emotional ramifications of a breast cancer diagnosis.

Still feeling the surge of adrenalin, I had this notion that I was strong and I'd show the world that: "Hey, I beat the disease and there's a world full of beauty beyond breast cancer."

When I printed the pictures, it was like seeing myself for the first time. I didn't see the world full of beauty part, only something very real, which had changed my world...and lots of anger.

Susan Claymon, a longtime breast cancer advocate, who continues to fight the disease, coordinated the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit and book and seven weeks of educational programming in the Bay area. She was warmly applauded as she was introduced at the San Francisco opening. The Breast Cancer Fund, The American Cancer Society (San Francisco Bay Chapter) and The San Francisco Chapter of the Susan G. Komen Foundation co-sponsored the project.

Art.Rage.Us. exhibit photograph ©4/24/98 Susan B. Markisz

For the past 9 years I have been participating in many collaborative projects with women confronting breast cancer. Several of these projects have resulted in exhibitions on the East and West Coasts recently, the publication of a book called Art.Rage.Us. The Art and Outrage of Breast Cancer, published by Chronicle Books, and the opportunity to connect with breast cancer survivors, oncologists and oncology nurses from across the country about the importance of the connection between creativity, art and healing the spirit.

Women with breast cancer are looking into their souls and finding courage, rage, anger, sadness, determination and strength, to document their journey through the emotional plateaus following a diagnosis of breast cancer. It is bard for the soul, which fulfills a need to make our inner demons known.

Following on the heels of the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit in San Francisco, last week I was among a group of five artists/breast cancer survivors invited by Novartis Pharmaceuticals in conjunction with the Creative Center for Women with Cancer, to attend the Oncology Nursing Society Conference in San Francisco and the American Society of Clinical Oncology Conference in Los Angeles.

This was perhaps a first in the established medical community, a historical coming together of traditional medical practitioners and artists to acknowledge the body's need to heal from within and the willingness of doctors and nurses whose approach generally constitutes a standard protocol for the treatment of cancer, to look at the art that's being done, and the need for healing on many levels, not just medically.

Eradication of the disease is our ultimate goal, but, before that happens, because there is no cause or cure yet in sight, these projects serve a more immediate purpose. They bring us together to share and validate our experiences, to support one another and to show women who are recently diagnosed that there is strength in our inner resource room waiting to be discovered.

Francoise and Denny were the first persons I met in San Francisco, the day before the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit opened. We spent about 3 hours looking at the exquisite book in the reference section of the library because we hadn't yet received our copies. We exchanged stories about how we've tried over the years to illustrate certain aspects of the disease, some of which resulted in meaningful photographs and some which resulted in truly funny ones. They almost threw us out of the library, we were laughing so hard. Francoise and Denny's relationship is clearly evident, both in the self portrait they made in 1993, which you can see on the wall, and the way they relate to each other in person. In them I see an enviable honesty, openness and intimacy, which breast cancer did not diminish.

Art.Rage.Us. exhibit photograph ©4/24/98 Susan B. Markisz

Many of us only discover that inner strength when confronting issues of mortality. Turning the camera inward, putting pen to paper, pencil to sketchbook, paintbrush to canvas serves a real and tangible purpose. It exorcises our demons and dilutes their power.

Francoise Hultzapple, a breast cancer survivor and Art.Rage.Us. exhibitor, speaks with Carol Reschke, who is working on a documentary project on breast cancer survivors and the connection between creativity and wellness. Reschke's own mother was recently diagnosed with the disease. In the background is a sculpture called "Johnna Becomes a Birch Tree" by Pam Golden, which she made as a testimony to her friend Johnna, who died of breast cancer at age 49.

Art.Rage.Us. exhibit photograph ©4/24/98 Susan B. Markisz

These projects have little to do with intrinsic shock value. Mostly, we muddle through our mastectomies, chemotherapies and radiation treatments, with a stoicism and determination that rarely lets on to the anguish of breast cancer. An understanding of this is essential, not only to the well being of breast cancer patients and their families, but also as a first step in recognizing that the eradication of breast cancer must become a national priority. In the nearly 10 years since my diagnosis, the questions are still the same and there are still no answers.

While the drug companies are finding newer and more effective chemotherapies and anti nausea drugs, there is still no cure for breast cancer. More importantly, there is still no cause attributed to this disease, which affects 185,000 newly diagnosed American women every year and kills 46,000 each year in this country alone.

Like many women, in my search for answers, I looked to a healthier diet, threw out suspicious pots and pans, and tried to rid myself of stress on the chance these endeavors might result in a lifetime without recurrence. But there are no guarantees.

What breast cancer has given me, in a somewhat circuitous way, however, is a gift. A gift of knowing many women with whom I share an instant connection. We speak the same language. We've squared off with our mortality. We may not have come to terms, and we know that while we may have an extended warranty, it's provisional.

This work is life affirming, but it is not without emotional canyons. When I walked into an exhibit in Princeton, NJ at the end of April, I saw a woman with whom I had exhibited my first breast cancer work in Congress in 1993. We had lost touch over the last few years. As I approached to greet her, my heart skipped a few beats as I mentally processed her turban and hat, the camouflage uniform of radiation and chemotherapy, her hands shaking as we embraced. She spoke of two recent recurrences.

They aren't simply art exhibits. They are a plea for help.

Joyce Bosc, a San Francisco resident said, that although there was no breast cancer in her family, she came to show support for several friends in the bay area who have the disease. We spoke about the importance of showing artwork that reflects what's going on in our lives.

A viewer, Susan Antinori, at the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit in San Francisco, looks at Margaret Stanton Murray's 1991-1993 60" x 40" black and white mural, which is part of a series - of self portraits (called "Transfiguration") which she did before and after her mastectomy in 1991, through reconstructive surgery.

This photograph was taken 5 days after her modified radical mastectomy, with drains still attached, 2 days after she came home from the hospital.

This portrait, along with my photograph "The Road Back" was censored for the Healing Legacies Exhibit in October of 1993 for the House of Representatives Cannon Rotunda. The sponsors of Art.Rage.Us. and Chronicle Books had no problem in exhibiting and publishing Murray's photo.

Art.Rage.Us. exhibit photograph ©4/24/98 Susan B. Markisz

Liz Bracco, a New York City resident, looks at Rosalie Ann Cassell's 1989 watercolor and ink painting entitled: "Waiting for the Biopsy" at the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit at the San Francisco Library.

Art.Rage.Us. exhibit photograph ©4/24/98 Susan B. Markisz

"Is it our lifestyle?" she asked. "Are we so fragmented that we're losing touch with each other?"

These are important questions in the face of illness and society in general. "We seem to be so disconnected from one another and this kind of art seems to be bringing us back into each others' lives," Bosc suggested.

She was impressed, she added, by the courage and willingness of the artists to talk about their disease and to express visually their innermost demons. As for courage, I don't know about that. But demons, ah...yes, I know them intimately.

Breast cancer engraves on a woman not only a lifetime of uncertainty over whether she is free of disease, but also a constant reminder of her loss. The first look in the mirror following a mastectomy requires bracing oneself for an image for which one is completely unprepared. As little girls, we grow up imagining what it will be like to have breasts; as women, we are so bombarded by a media induced symbol of sexuality that we're often not content with our own God-given endowment. But nothing prepares us for mastectomy.

Even the surgeons, who have an ample supply of slides to show at medical meetings, rarely show a prospective mastectomy patient the unvarnished truth. They would rather show what it could be like with reconstructive surgery, as if the act of substituting a piece of silicone or saline for breast tissue could negate the fact of the cancer itself.

Shortly before my operation, I asked my surgeon if I would still have a nipple, so naive was I as to my impending surgery. He replied: "No," and alluded no further to the procedure he was about to perform.

It is, of course, an easier question to ask than, for example: "Might I die?"

The real issue is mortality, but it is clouded by daily reminders of what we ought to look like, from uncensored magazine photographs of nude women, suggesting a universal model of perfection, to advertisements in which sexuality is reduced only to physical attributes.

Actors Michael Tucker and Jill Eikenberry spoke to several hundred guests who attended the Art.Rage.Us. exhibit opening at the San Francisco Library about what it was like to have had breast cancer---from Eikenberry's perspective, who was diagnosed in 1986, --- to the spouse's perspective, who spoke very tenderly and lovingly of his wife and all she went through during her treatment.

My daughter was 4 at the time of my diagnosis. While I was putting her to bed one night, she whispered to me: "Mommy, if you die, can I die next to you?"

That night, I decided (if I had anything to say about it) that I wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

In 1993, my self portrait "The Road Back" was selected to be part of an exhibit called: "Healing Legacies: A Collection of Art and Writing by Women with Breast Cancer" in the House of Representatives. I was informed that the Office of the Capitol Architect had censored my portrait because it was "unsuitable for viewing by the general public." As a photographer it was difficult enough to tolerate the censorship, but as a woman who has had breast cancer, I found it ironic and sad that an exhibit on that subject could exclude an image that I felt subtly conveyed volumes about what it was like to have had the disease.

We're making our voices heard, through our tears, through our art, through our rage, and through our passion for living. Five years after the censorship, people are finally looking at the pictures.

Susan B. Markisz

May 20, 1998

Art.Rage.Us Web site