I'm thrilled to finally talk about a project I've been quietly working on for the last year and a half (although the real work is just getting started!). The project is called "Beauty After Breast Cancer", and it's easily the most impactful project I've ever been involved with.
Early 2013, I was introduced to a Katelyn; a woman with an incredibly important and significant book idea in mind, and who was looking for up to 33 photographers to bring it to reality. We became fast friends and ultimately decided that I'd shoot the entire project, instead of trying to find a different shooter for every story. Hence began a relationship and the start of a multi-year adventure.
That project is called "Beauty After Breast Cancer". This will be a coffee-table style book containing photographs and stories of thirty three women who dare to bare their scars, reconstruction (or not), tattoos, and other results of breast cancer surgery. The purpose of this project is to give hope to women making the life changing decisions they will be faced with when discovering that surgery is in their future; realization that breast cancer surgery isn't the end of their beauty and femininity. The book is destined for surgery centers all over the world, so women have an alternative to the clinical, headless, personality-free post-op photos they are shown today.
This project started, as they often do, from a very personal story. To read that, you'll need to head over to BeautyAfterBreastCancer.com and read about Katelyn's path to this book. From there you can also see a sample story, and also see our current media coverage (as of this writing, for the launch we had a radio interview and a newspaper write-up, with more of both to come!). But what I want you to know today is that we are finally officially launching the project, and most importantly, launching the Kickstarter campaign that Katelyn needs to make this book a reality.
Please visit the Beauty After Breast Cancer Kickstarter page and watch the video, read the story, and support this project. According to cancer.org, one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. Do you know eight women or more? Of course you do. Everyone does. That means virtually every human on the planet, yourself included, will be touched by the effects of breast cancer, if not the cancer itself.
Contribute to this important project. Contributions range from a simple $15 gift, or sponsoring a single book or many books to be sent to your local cancer center, up to supporting a loved one who's story you want told for consideration in inclusion in the book.
Share it with everyone you know. Post this on Facebook, tweet it, tell a friend, mail a postcard. Whatever it takes, please help to get the word out on this project.
The short URL is http://kck.st/1CVAIFE — let's make this book a reality.