A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness

Stephen Starkman’s photographs from his book The Proximity of Mortality: A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Cancer, are rooted in receiving a diagnosis of “incurable cancer.” With these 75 photographs, Starkman wants to “open a conversation on mortality/death as seen through first-hand experience . . . The book is about life from the perspective of death . . . The book also includes quotes from other cancer survivors, reinforcing recurring themes of fear, isolation, fatigue and the work of the journey itself.”

The three photographs shown here relate to Spence’s experience with the medical aspects of cancer, in which the human is confronted by—and can be consumed by—what the medical industry, with its high-tech and lower-tech machines, deems as “comfort” and/or “cure.” Both Spence and Starkman ask: how do we maintain our identity in the face of what the medical industry offers?

From The Proximity of Mortality: A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Cancer by Stephen L. Starkman, © Stephen L. Starkman. Courtesy of the artist.

The image is of a man wearing a khaki jacket over a t-shirt, holding a phone. He is wearing a medical mask and glasses with a dark rim. The man is standing in front of a wall with medical equipment and machines directly in front of him.

From The Proximity of Mortality: A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Cancer by Stephen L. Starkman, © Stephen L. Starkman. Courtesy of the artist.

The photo is of a large white CT machine with text that says "SIEMENS SOMATOM Definition AS LAP CARINAsim X [mm] 7 [mm] 0.0 Lateral Move To OFF LASTar LAP". The CT scanner bed has a white blanket with blue and red stripes on the left side draped over it.

From The Proximity of Mortality: A Visual Artist’s Journey Through Cancer by Stephen L. Starkman, © Stephen L. Starkman. Courtesy of the artist.

This is a photo of a man’s head lying on the bed of a medical scanner. The man’s head is covered in a white mesh net which follows the contours of his head. He is wearing a light-colored jacket with a white sheet draped over his chest.

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