Pages in this Feature: Real Bodies and Naked Truths The Photographer, Frank Cordelle, Speaks Excerpts of Two Women's Stories Christina © 2007 by Frank Cordelle

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s you stand before this photograph looking at me, this woman in black and white facing her image in a mirror, I doubt that you can really see me.

Why? Because I’m an expert at hiding: I’ve been doing it for decades. On the outside, I’m a successful businesswoman, well educated, well paid, in control—I have a perfect life.

But there’s another me on the inside: a woman with a 20-year history of bulimia. A woman with so much rage and self-hate inside that all the binging and purging on this earth can not wash it away.

My life is a constant hour by hour, day by day struggle. Power and success in the boardroom countered by lonely late-night eating binges. Purging, kneeling in tears, trying to cleanse myself again and again. Desperate to be thin. Looking at myself in the mirror afterward, promising never to do it again. Hating myself even more because I knew I would. I couldn’t stop.

The day this photograph was made, I stood in front of another mirror: naked and alone, and for the first time in years, I had to see myself.

It was terrifying!

At first I was repulsed, I wanted to turn and run. All I saw was fat, undesirability, flaws, and failure.

But the more I forced myself to look, the more I began to see her. She was reaching out to me and I was willing to let her.

Watch, see me moving toward her—see her arms opening wide, encircling me as if to say: “Come, let me embrace you, only I can give you permission to be content with who you are— and we are beautiful!”

Christina

Pages in this Feature: Real Bodies and Naked Truths The Photographer, Frank Cordelle, Speaks Excerpts of Two Women's Stories Kana © 2007 by Frank Cordelle

Kana, 52

ihad my picture taken yesterday. Frank behind the eye of the black machine, me standing there naked with all the lights on, a second radiation. This time the camera was taking zaps from my body, me, emitting rads, saying I am a lady with only one breast, a freak, dancing on the edge of your mind.

See it’s gone, that breast, sliced off, cut up, and discarded—medical waste perhaps to float up onto the shores of New Jersey. I’m stitched up to keep the rest of my life inside. But scarred. No more breast. Gone. Down to the hard bony core. Put your hand on it, pounding away, sending signals to the world: I am. Funny old, freaky old, scarred old me. I am. Burning my heart onto the film. Look at me. Listen to my life. A Woman. One of the hundred, shoulder to shoulder, soft arms touching, smooth skin with edges blurred, looking out at you.

Look at us.

-- Kana

Photographer's Note: By the time I photographed Kana, she had already experienced a relapse and a second surgery; unfortunately her cancer would recur yet a third time, and metastasize to other parts of her body. She passed away on April 19th, 2001. She was a great lady.