50/50 of the autosomal dominant inheritance series
/ Family OM-13.0283-01
On the images, 8, 9 and 10-year-old girls are playing at having boobs. It is not known exactly where the photographs were taken, but the location appears to be familiar to them. Their innocent, pure, carefree faces, which should only reveal the joy of the present moment, nevertheless betray the gravity of a subject that affects my family.
In our genetic heritage we inherit the good, and sometimes the bad genes. It is this random genetic transmission that this triptych evokes, because my story is linked to a deletion in the BRCA1 gene (for Breast Cancer 1) of which I am a carrier. This mutation was passed on to me and my two sisters by my father. This mutation has caused a large number of cancers in my family, often affecting the women at a very young age.
The invisible is sometimes frightening… As a carrier of this gene and a survivor of breast cancer, I wanted to capture in images for this series the question of the genetic inheritance which, although it is not visible, can represent a heavy burden to bear. An insidious disease/A silent illness/devious evil that perhaps and against my will I passed on to my children. The 50/50 title of this work evokes the particular statistical risk that these girls have of being carriers of this mutation of the BRCA1 gene.