CANCERISM_
Cancerism is the hypothetical tendency to develop cancer. I see Cancer as a metaphor for the uncontrollable and unwanted thoughts that we all have. Everyone has uncontrollable thoughts; everyone has cancer. I wrote and designed this book based off of the eight stages in a human’s life, and in collaboration with thousands of strangers.
“Cancerism” is written based off of Psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory on the struggles in the eight stages of a human’s life; we struggle with a different kind of conflict in 8 distinct periods of our lives. I conducted a survey, online and in person, asking the question “What is something you want to forget?” In this social collaboration with over a thousand anonymous participants of all ages, a compilation of “cancers” were collected to represent the struggles in our lives.
I shot all the imagery, all of which represented things that “spread,” for example: sand, seeds, webs, or vines. Sets of images were dedicated to each chapter.
