Last Updated on 09/10/2018 by Chris Gampat
Photobook project “47 / A Life with Cystic Fibrosis” features intimate portraits of individuals afflicted with the disease.
Once again, photography proves how powerful it is as a tool that to help impact the lives of many people. In this case, it’s those who are afflicted by cystic fibrosis (CF).
Just last August 22, British photographer Simon Wiffen launched a Kickstarter project for his photobook, 47 / A Life with Cystic Fibrosis, with the goal of raising awareness on CF and to gather funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in the UK. It was a simple yet powerful idea: Wiffen took the portraits of 47 individuals aged four to 61 years old afflicted by CF, and placed them side by side with short extracts from the conversations he had with them during the shoots.
Each of the portraits was in black and white and was shot in the same style and the same lighting. According to Wiffen, he decided to do it in this manner so that readers won’t be distracted from the subjects’ stories.
Here are some sample pages from the book:
“47 / A Life With Cystic Fibrosis” is a series of intimate portraits of people living with CF and offers an insight into their attitudes to life and their condition up to and beyond the median predicted survival rate of 47.
Wiffen started working on this project in January this year, finding subjects, scheduling photo shoots across the UK, listening to hours and hours of audio recordings, and finding printers. The shoots themselves took him over six months to complete.
According to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, CF is a lifelong genetic disease that affects around 10,400 people in the UK and around 100,000 around the world. It causes the internal organs, particularly the lungs and the digestive system, to become clogged with mucus. This causes chronic infections and inflammation, even difficulty in digesting food. CF currently has no cure, only treatments to keep the patients’ health in check.
Wiffen’s Kickstarter project is set to end on September 20, but he was actually able to reach his goal of $2,585 within the first eight hours of the launch! As of this writing, almost double of this amount was pledged by 136 backers.
To find out more and to back 47 / A Life with Cystic Fibrosis, visit its Kickstarter page.
Images taken from Kickstarter.