Winged Victory: Altered Images : Transcending Breast Cancer - Softcover

Art Myers; Maria Marrocchino

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1889169005 ISBN 13: 9781889169002

Publisher: Photographic Gallery of Fine Art Books, 1996

Synopsis

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This new book of photographs of semi-nude women and their partners presents a remarkable portrait of breast cancer survivors, of which there are 1.6 million in the US. These photographic subjects are portrayed not as victims but as women of elegance, strength and sensuousness who have transcended their disease and resultant surgery. The women in the book range in age from their twenties to over eighty-three years. Accompanied by original poetry by Maria Marrocchino and subject written vignettes, these women redefine their self-image: breast missing, altered and reconstructed. As Dr. David Spiegel, the nationally recognized specialist in the therapy of women facing life-threatening illness notes in the foreword, "...they present their bodies and themselves with humor, sadness, vulnerability, honesty. They challenge us to look beyond what is missing, beneath the scar. They evoke admiration: of their beauty and their courage. They do not hide their loss, they transcend it."

About this title

About the Author

As well as being a fine art photographer, Art Myers is a physician specializing in preventive medicine and public health. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and received his post-doctoral degree in public health from the Graduate School of Public Health, San Diego State University. Although largely self taught in photography he has studied in workshops with Annie Leibovitz, Arnold Newman, Larry Fink, Sally Mann, Joyce Tenneson and other noted artists. His photographs have been exhibited in many sites across the country and in Europe. The series of photographs in this book resulted in Myers being selected as one of "The Top 100 Photographers", in the Ernst Haas Annual Photography awards in 1995.

Maria Marrocchino works in advertising in New York City. She has been writing poetry since she was a child. This is the first time that her poems have appeared in a book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

There is great beauty in a woman's form. Yet what is it that is so endlessly fascinating about it? It is not simply the curves, the pleasingly yet forever varied arrangement of breasts, stomach, thighs. It is the spirit which moves her, makes her part of something more. Thus the Winged Victory of Samothrace stirs one not as a piece of stone with arms amputated and wings attached. As one approaches it from below and climbs the staircase to it in the Louvre one's breath is taken away by its power: female strength transcending the ravages of time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Photographic Gallery of Fine Art Books
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1889169005
• ISBN 13: 9781889169002
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 56