This body of work attempts to deconstruct the medical gaze through photography, looking at the body as a medical image. The aim is to initiate conversation about how chronically ill patients can regain feelings of bodily and emotional autonomy.

This is a collaborative project, focusing on individuals who have been diagnosed with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (Crohn’s and Colitis). Often, chronic illness is experienced internally and many symptoms aren’t visible. There is a misperception that you must ‘look unwell’ to be justified as having a disease. The intention with this project is to make visible chronically ‘ill’ bodies and display how there is not one way to look sick.

I have collaborated with the individuals in these images, asking them how they want to be captured and what parts of their body feel important to represent. Inverting some of the pictures plays on notions of medical imaging, reflecting scans and challenging the idea that disease must be evidenced visibly for a diagnosis to be confirmed. Additionally, inverted shots of local landscapes transform the image into a constellation of patterns, textures and shapes, acknowledging how the body is also mapped by imaging.

As patients, we rarely see medical images of ourselves, they are viewed privately in a hierarchical system. By displaying images in a public space that replicate scans, both the individual and the audience can explore their own preconceptions regarding body-image and representation.