Suthasinee Sangkhum, Ph.D.
Abstract :
Naked is a photographic series synthesising, expressing, and liberating my cancer life journey through the interdisciplinary integration of autoethnographic methodology, brutalist aesthetic principles, and trauma-informed art practice. Composed in negative and sepia tones within a brutalist photographic sensibility, the work traces my transformation through illness, survival, and an ongoing emotional rebirth. The body becomes both archive and metaphor, documenting the stages of my neuroendocrine carcinoma breast-cancer experience—from diagnosis and mastectomy to chemotherapy, radiation, and the reclamation of self that followed.
Each of the five images corresponds to a threshold moment in this journey. The Lab Result layers fragments of my pathology report, capturing the instant the diagnosis split my life into “before” and “after,” revealing a rare small-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma with no standard treatment. The Cut presents the raw post-operative wound, recording the aftermath of three surgeries and the beginning of chemotherapy and twenty-five radiation sessions; the scar emerges as a line of pain and the first quiet evidence of survival. The Drain depicts the drainage tube I carried for a month, a period when I could not wear a bra and had to walk into the hospital half-exposed; the image embodies the vulnerability, humiliation, and unexpected strength of that stage. The Unequal Eyes reflects the consequences of salivary-gland removal, when one eye remained chronically open and filled with tears; it marks how illness reshapes even the face we present to the world. No More Small portrays my present condition—no breast, no womb, no salivary gland—and the liberation that followed: a refusal to shrink myself, apologize, or hide behind perfection.
Through the visual language of negative photography, shadow and light replace conventional beauty with truth, echoing the X-ray and radiological images that shaped my medical journey. The series challenges idealized notions of female bodily integrity, reframing the scarred body as an emblem of endurance, vulnerability, and transformation. This synthesis of photographic practice, medical documentation aesthetics, and embodied narrative generates a hybrid visual language that bridges personal testimony and collective understanding.
As part of a broader creative-research inquiry, Naked explores how personal trauma can generate collective understanding through visual storytelling. By making visible what is often hidden, the project contributes to contemporary dialogues on healing, body politics, and feminist aesthetics. Ultimately, Naked proposes an aesthetics of survival—one that reveals the quiet power of being unguarded, truthful, and unapologetically real.
Objectives :
- To narrate a personal cancer-survivor journey reflecting universal experiences of vulnerability and resilience through photographic documentation.
- To explore the photographic body as a site of philosophical reflection and art-therapeutic reconstruction, synthesising autoethnographic research with visual practice.
- To transform illness and trauma into emotional empowerment through the visual metaphor of light and shadow, drawing from brutalist aesthetics and medical imaging traditions.
- To contribute to interdisciplinary discourse on trauma, embodiment, and feminist art practice by bridging personal narrative with theoretical frameworks from illness studies, performance art, and body politics.
Conceptual Framework :
This project is grounded in an autoethnographic approach, treating the artist’s lived experience as data for creative research. Drawing from brutalist and feminist art traditions, performance documentation, and contemporary photography, Naked conceptualizes the body as a living text—inscribed by illness, time, rupture, and healing.
The theoretical foundation draws on Susan Sontag’s examination of illness as metaphor and Elaine Scarry’s articulation of the body in pain, where suffering becomes a vessel for meaning-making. Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals provides a crucial feminist framework for understanding cancer survivorship as both personal testimony and political act. Within this framework, the body is not merely documented but interpreted as a site of knowledge production.
The brutalist aesthetic—characterized by raw materiality, structural honesty, and the refusal of ornament—finds its photographic equivalent in the stark negative imagery employed here. Like brutalist architecture’s exposed concrete and unfinished surfaces, these images reject beautification in favor of truth-telling. Negative photography was selected for its psychological and symbolic resonance: darkness reveals rather than conceals. The inversion of light functions as a metaphor for how trauma forces hidden truths into visibility, mirroring the diagnostic function of X-ray and radiological imaging.
By translating emotional stages—fear, endurance, release—into a visual rhythm, the series positions artistic practice as a means of reclaiming agency. The creative act becomes a form of self-construction, allowing the artist to map her identity beyond the medical narrative. The project therefore stands at the intersection of autoethnography, embodiment studies, trauma-informed art, and brutalist aesthetics, proposing that personal testimony can catalyze collective empathy and social reflection. This synthesis of disciplines creates a hybrid methodology where photography functions simultaneously as documentation, therapy, and philosophical inquiry.
Process / Methodology :
Phase 1: Embodied Documentation
Reflection during treatment and post-surgery recovery, recorded through mobile-phone photography and mirror observations. This phase synthesises the immediacy of smartphone documentation with the reflective distance of self-portraiture, creating a dual perspective on bodily transformation.
Phase 2: Visual Experimentation & Technical Development
Home-based photo sessions exploring single-source lighting, shadow, and partial abstraction to depict the body’s changing states. Drawing from brutalist principles of material honesty and the visual language of medical imaging, each session documented specific physical and emotional thresholds.
Phase 3: Post-Production & Aesthetic Synthesis
Manual adjustment of contrast, lighting, and tonal layering using accessible digital tools (Adobe) to evoke textures of skin, memory, and fragility. The choice of minimal, accessible editing tools reflects a commitment to authenticity and the democratization of artistic practice. Negative and sepia tonalities were developed to achieve psychological depth and evoke the visual atmosphere of medical imaging—particularly X-ray and radiological scans.
Phase 4: Curation & Narrative Construction
Selection of five images forming a chronological and emotional arc—diagnosis, cut, survival, adaptation, and liberation. Each image functions as both a standalone document and part of a larger narrative sequence, synthesising individual moments into collective meaning.
Techniques and Materials :
The project employs digital photography using mobile devices and mirror-based self-portrait techniques. Natural and single-source artificial lighting are used to sculpt the body and highlight textures associated with vulnerability and strength. Editing is intentionally minimal to preserve the rawness of the documented moment; negative and sepia tonalities are developed through Adobe to achieve psychological depth and evoke the visual atmosphere of medical imaging—particularly X-ray and radiological scans.
Final works are printed on transparent A3-size sheets, creating a layered, ghost-like materiality that mirrors the translucence of the medical experience.
Result / Conclusion :
Naked proposes an aesthetics of survival—one that foregrounds truth over concealment, presence over perfection. The series demonstrates how photographic practice can transform trauma into agency and silence into dialogue. The resulting images reveal the paradoxical coexistence of fragility and strength, presenting the body as both scarred and sacred. This synthesis of brutalist honesty, feminist embodiment, and autoethnographic inquiry creates a visual language that bridges personal experience with collective understanding.
Beyond documenting a personal history, the work functions as a social statement and a methodological contribution to interdisciplinary research. It invites viewers to confront the emotional landscapes of illness, womanhood, and bodily reclamation, while demonstrating how accessible technologies and hybrid methodologies can support rigorous creative inquiry. The creative process itself operates as a therapeutic reconstruction, enabling navigation through grief, resilience, and rebirth by synthesising documentation and interpretation. Through visual storytelling, Naked contributes to broader discourses on body politics, feminist aesthetics, trauma-informed art practice, and the potential of autoethnography as creative methodology.
Ultimately, to be “naked” here is not to be exposed, but to be real—to stand in truth, unguarded, aligned, and unapologetic. The project affirms that art can serve simultaneously as testimony, resistance, healing, and a form of mindful self-cultivation.
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