I have chosen to look at her work because she uses a documentary photography style to showcase her battle with chronic illness much like what i want to do.

“An invigorating – if ultimately heartbreaking – experience.-The Guardian

Influential photographer Jo Spence’s (1934–92) work documents her diagnosis of breast cancer and subsequent healthcare regime throughout the 1980s. Her raw and confrontational photography is shown alongside Oreet Ashery’s (b. 1966) award-winning miniseries ‘Revisiting Genesis’, 2016. Ashery’s politically engaged work explores loss and the lived experience of chronic illness in the digital era. In October 2019, a new commission by Ashery, exploring the recent death of her father, will be added. 

Follow your own path through this exhibition, challenge your understanding of ‘misbehaving’ or ‘untypical’ bodies, and reflect on how illness shapes identity”

Currently exhibiting her work. 30 May 2019—26 January 2020

 Undoubtedly, her most heroic work was The Picture of Health, in 1982, which she began after being diagnosed with breast cancer. This series of self-portraits is both alternative therapy and a critical response to modern medicine, with Spence regaining ownership of her body by documenting her treatment.

In all of her work, Spence confronted us with the things society tries to conceal – not least women’s unconventional physiques. In The Picture of Health she upped the ante, bringing disease into the frame. In one bare-chested photo, she stands before a mammogram, her breast laid out between its slabs like a separate entity. Later, she poses in a biker’s helmet, holding up her arms to reveal battle scars.

Spence survived breast cancer, preferring Chinese medicine to more aggressive treatment. It’s incredibly sad that she then died of leukaemia in 1992, though she continued creating her playful, defiant photos until the end