Winner of 2016 Photo Review in Arles -
David Fathi returns to Rencontres de la Photographie with a new body of work.
The Last Road of the Immortal WomanOn October 4th, 1951, Henrietta Lacks passes away from a very aggressive form of cancer. Then starts her last journey, from the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to the family cemetery in Virginia. Nobody knew at the time that another journey started for her, more precisely for her cells. A small sample of her tumor was taken without her knowledge by Dr. George Gey. He was amazed to observe that these cells behaved in a way never seen before: they kept growing and multiplying, again and again, infinitely. Henrietta could not know, but she had become immortal. This case is one of the most famous, and problematic, stories in modern medicine. The last road of the immortal woman is a liminal space. Between mortality and immortality, scientific and emotional, political and personal, metaphysical and empirical, exploitation and recognition. It’s the space separating what a human life is, and can be.
David Fathi
www.davidfathi.com
www.rencontres-arles.com
