ABSTRACT

In 1993, The New York Times Magazine published a story entitled ‘The anguished politics of breast cancer.’ The image on the cover was a self-portrait of artist and model Matuschka showing the physical consequences of a radical mastectomy. The picture elicited heated reactions, and the protagonist became an icon of the Women's Health Movement. Twelve years later, another model and photographer, Lynn Kohlman, published Front to back, which included portraits of her body after treatments for breast and brain cancer. Although free of the marks of pink ribbon culture, Kohlman's work was framed within the dominant discourse of breast cancer in the twenty-first century, characterized by individualism, positive thinking, and the idea of consumer's choice. This paper discusses Matuschka's and Kohlman's cancer photography within a comparative diachronic framework, focusing on the turn-of-the-century politics of representation. We argue that, despite their common traits, their respective productions are signs of a radical shift in the cultural paradigm of breast cancer. Through an analysis of the studium of their photographs and the preferred meaning that they suggest, we conclude that Matuschka's project feeds into the feminist battle for equity in health initiated by the early Breast Cancer Movement, whereas Kohlman's strengthens the postfeminist stance that is prevalent in the current panorama of neoliberal capitalism.

摘要

1993 年，《纽约时报》杂志发表了一篇题为“乳腺癌的痛苦政治”的故事。封面上的图片是艺术家和模特 Matuschka 的自画像，展示了根治性乳房切除术的身体后果。这张照片引起了热烈的反响，主角成为了妇女健康运动的标志。十二年后，另一位模特兼摄影师林恩·科尔曼 (Lynn Kohlman) 发表了《从前到后》，其中包括她在接受乳腺癌和脑癌治疗后的身体肖像。虽然没有粉红丝带文化的痕迹，但科尔曼的作品却被框定在 21 世纪乳腺癌的主导话语中，其特点是个人主义、积极思考和消费者选择的观念。本文在比较历时框架内讨论了 Matuschka 和 Kohlman 的癌症摄影，重点关注世纪之交的再现政治。我们认为，尽管他们有共同的特点，但他们各自的作品是乳腺癌文化范式发生根本转变的迹象。通过对他们照片的研究和首选含义的分析根据他们的建议，我们得出结论，Matuschka 的项目助长了早期乳腺癌运动发起的争取健康公平的女权主义斗争，而 Kohlman 的项目则强化了当前新自由主义资本主义全景中普遍存在的后女权主义立场。