Community and the Public Body in Breast Cancer Media Activism

In this article, I consider how communities form around health care advocacy and activism. My concern is the place of visual media in the politics of breast cancer. Art photography and film are considered against mainstream images and media campaigns focusing on breast cancer. The primary work considered is the self-portrait photography of the artist Matuschka and the film The Body Beautiful by Ngozi Onwurah. I argue that these alternative texts help us to think about the ways in which issues such as race, age and beauty are key aspects in the experience of breast cancer, and not tangential cultural issues or ‘appearance-related side effects’, as one breast cancer support programme puts it.