Facing Chemo - a photographic exhibit examing the effects of chemotherapy - by healthcare photographer Robert Houser
It's the mid naughts and I'm shooting a woman on Union Square in San Francisco. She's the Executive Director of the Council on Aging and she has just told me that she is about to undergo chemotherapy. I could see in her eyes that I had just "lost" her; her mind was drifting, leaving the shoot we were so close to finishing. How could I reel her back, back to me, to Union Square to the shoot at hand? I told her I would love to photograph her when she lost her hair, something she could have from the experience. She was not interested and the shoot ended. Years later she called me, quickly blurting out on the phone, 'does your offer still stand?' Yes! About to undergo a bone marrow transplant, she was in the middle of her second round of chemo. Two days later we spent a rainy afternoon drinking tea, eating chocolate, and photographing by the light of an air shaft in her apartment. The following week, this image was accepted into Communication Arts' Photography Annual, kicking off what would be the start of my long running series, Facing Chemo.