A photographic exhibition of six cancer patients at Vall d’Hebron seeks to break taboos

Next February 6, in the framework of World Cancer Day, the exhibition of the photographer from Ximena Borrazas ‘Cancer. Breaking down taboos’. in the Centre Cívic Barradas of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) with the twofold aim of raise awareness in society about the importance of realizing periodic check-ups in order to promote the early diagnosis from cancer and raise funds for fund research projects in adult and pediatric oncology at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) and Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) respectively. The exhibition can be visited from free of charge from February 6 to March 5.

The project ‘Cancer. Tearing down taboos’ project exposes through images the story of six patients from the Medical Oncology Service and the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Service of the Vall d’Hebron Hospital. “I wanted to express through my photographs that it is possible to talk about cancer, We have to talk about cancer and we should not be afraid of a possible diagnosis. On the contrary, if I have cancer, the sooner I know about it the better, because advances in research are making it possible to get out of this disease,” explains Borrazas.

“For this reason, I wanted to to collaborate on this project with VHIO. by linking the exhibition to a donation of funds to continue research in the fight against cancer and that more and more people can tell positive cancer stories like the protagonists of my photographs”.

Cancer, a word still taboo

Ximena Borrazas’s uncle died of cancer at the age of 22. She doesn’t know much more because from that moment on, in the photographer’s family, it was banished the word cancer. I grew up with those silences about my uncle’s illness and I saw my grandmother overprotect my mother, protecting her even from the word cancer itself,” explains the photographer.

“I know people who in the face of symptoms that could be. worrying prefer not to go to the doctor for fear of being told they have cancer. They associate it with death and prefer not to know.” says Borrazas, who has undertaken this project precisely to show stories of suffering. Suffering at the time of diagnosis, during treatment, but also of life, because they are people who have managed to move on.