DENVER - The inspiration came during a bike ride with a friend, whose mother was fighting breast cancer. Katy Tartakoff was the friend who could listen and empathize.
When Katy was 5 years old, her grandmother died. When Katy was 22 years old her mother died. Mother and grandmother died at age 50 from breast cancer.
More than 10 years ago, Katy started to work on a book to celebrate the human spirit found in women and men with breast cancer.
Katy fills the pages of the book with black-and-white images of the faces of the disease.
"It shows people living through cancer, before breast cancer and many years after breast cancer," Katy said.
Titled "Cup Half Full; Life in the Face of Breast Cancer," the book shares quotes from those featured in the book.
Katy added, "One of the strongest thoughts in terms of feedback that we've gotten, is that the quotes are as powerful as the photographs in the book and that moves me deeply."
In an effort to document the many phases of recovery, Katy captures the graphic reality of breast cancer and the various phases of reconstruction.
"I think provocative is a good word, it shows what it looks like to have implants. It shows what it looks like when there is no breast left, you can see the scars where they took the breast off," Katy said.
While the book itself was a 10-year project, some of the photographs go back as many as 20 years. Of the 50 people photographed for the book, just one has died from breast cancer.
As for the message of the book, Katy said, "I hope people see the human spirit thriving through the disease that these are human beings, no one is exempt and that we can, we can get through it."
One of the survivors in the book is a mom with two daughters. Katy believes the poem shared by Gretchen Hale is especially fitting for the theme.
It reads:
Having breast cancer was like being in a cocoon. I saw myself as insulated in a stark, impenetrable encasement fighting silently praying for healing fearful of what life would be like when the time came to be expelled from my cocoon.
Cancer is a temporary, transforming state.
What awaited me outside?
Would I have bright new wings?
Be strong and take flight?
Or would my cancer shell finally crack open releasing me to the ground with withered wings, unable to support the weight of my exhausted body?
And die?
All I knew for sure was
I knew nothing for sure.
The proceeds from "Cup Half Full" are also going to breast cancer efforts.
Fifty percent will go to the Denver Health Mammovan.
Twenty-five percent will benefit the Andre Center which provides clinical education/navigation for women and men diagnosed with breast cancer.
To order a book or make a donation go to http://www.katytartakoff.com.
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