I am Still Here by Helen Whitton
Tricia and I met for the first time on the day of the photoshoot, in a London hotel room. It felt slightly risky, allowing a stranger into my room, but since having cancer I have become, if anything, less cautious. Before the shoot itself, we spent half an hour talking to one another. Tricia spoke about her background and what had inspired her to start the project. We chatted easily; I experienced her as warm, calm, measured and vulnerable. It felt as though we were teetering on the brink of the unknown: neither of us sure how the shoot would go, or how the experience might feel. Again I was conscious of a sense of risk and of taking a leap of faith.
I was dressed in my dance clothes: leotard, tights, pointe shoes. I chose them, I suppose, because these clothes are symbolic of my younger self, my healthy self, by able self, my freer self. The self before trauma and illness. It is the self that I lose over and over again but which, when I find it, gives me the strongest sense of being and identity.
I began by lying on the bed while she prepared the first shot. I enjoyed watching her meticulously play with the natural light; it was almost hypnotic observing her work with such care and patience to achieve what she wanted. As I lay on the bed I began to talk about my illness: the unimaginable trauma of being told I had cancer; the unbearable agony of contemplating saying goodbye to my children; the overwhelming sense of loss as my 'before cancer life' disappeared in a split second; the adjustment to the 'new normal'; the medical procedures and physical discomforts; the changes in my physical and emotional abilities; the dramatic existential transformation. I rarely talk to other people about my illness in such detail, so plainly and so openly, yet speaking about these things seemed like an entirely natural process. It felt like I was telling her for no specific reason; consciously, at least, I wanted nothing from Tricia or from the process itself. I had no idea, before I met Tricia, what she was going to do with the photographs, simply that they were for a project. I'm not sure what I wanted from it at an unconscious level; perhaps simply to be seen and to be taken seriously as a person with cancer.
The dialogue between us, as she took the photographs, flowed easily. We spoke, not just about my illness, but about vulnerability, trauma and survival, all at a deeply personal level. As we spoke I became less and less aware of the camera being separate to Tricia, or to me; it simply seemed to be a part of the dialogue. I had very little sense of time during the shoot; I still don't know how long the session lasted. I felt as though we could have continued for hours. As we said goodbye at the hotel room door I immediately experienced a sadness, a loss. It was as if a ghost had come into the room, shared the secrets of humanity with me and vanished. It took ten minutes to come round and feel present again. Now, reflecting on my experience of the shoot, I wonder why it impacted me so powerfully.
Firstly, I think I had a sense of being witnessed. I was seen, heard and taken note of. The trauma of being ill, and facing possible death, was an enormous event in my life and yet now, as I recover, there seems to be little space in everyday life to speak about it or acknowledge it, even though I have counseling. The 'life goes on' expectation (mine, others' and society's) means that I am often, unintentionally, dissociated from my illness. It gets put in a box and ignored. The amount of time I spend acknowledging and including it in my life, is immensely disproportionate to the size of the trauma. Yet Tricia was interested in my illness and gave me a dedicated space to speak about my experience. It was not just the process of speaking about it, however, which seemed important and transformative, but also the process of being heard, witnessed and documented as I spoke. Tricia and the camera witnessed me and remained focused and interested. They took me seriously and gave weight to the subject of my illness. They captured it and documented it; permitted it to be all important and worthy not just of passing, polite attention, but of enduring attention in the form of the photographs.
Secondly, I felt liberated by the process and I believe that it was the transitory nature of the relationship, between us, that enabled this sense of freedom. Being able to talk about something very personal and fragile to someone I had not met before, and who I am unlikely to meet again, felt exhilarating and freeing. I did not feel ensnared or bound by her expectations of me, by my expectations of her, or by any ongoing consequences. As a result I found I could talk in depth and boldly. Speaking in such detail, as I was photographed, meant that my mind and body were full to the brim with my emotional experience. My physical being, as captured in the photographs, is a living expression of my experiences and my relationship to my illness: it is in my body language; my eyes; my posture; my face; and the whole of my physical being.
Lastly, I felt embodied and real. My initial, albeit irrational, response to getting cancer was that I felt less 'valid' and less substantial than I had done pre-cancer; less of a full person than I had been previously; a sort of failure; less real. My relationship to my body, in particular, changed when I became ill: I believed that my body had let me down; betrayed me. As a dancer I have an intense relationship with my body and my sense of identity is deeply connected with my sense of physicality and physical ability. Now I find that my body is not what I had assumed it to be: superior, fit, healthy, enduring. I am facing the existential reality that my body is vulnerable, changed, changing, dying. Through the process of being photographed by Tricia, I experienced my body, and myself, as real and present; valid and undeniable. By capturing my being in a moment in time, the camera highlighted and confirmed my existence: I survived; I am still here; I exist.
Thank you Tricia