Stopping Time: An extremely powerful photoshoot and story from photographer Beth Sanders

Some folks want to turn back time. Some want to jump into the future. Me? I bring time to a screeching halt.

If you called up the girls I hung with when we were 8, they’d say, “that Beth, she’d drape us with towels and sheets, and make us climb way up into trees and pretend we were high fashion models”.  All true. I loved using a camera from the git-go.

Somewhere along the way, me and my camera parted company. Time moved on, and life got in my way: I left home, got hooked up with the wrong kind of men, and ended up broke, waitressing, and living with my eldest brother and his wife in Los Angeles.

One day, I was walking down 4th Street (in LA), past a pawn shop and in the window was a canon A-1 film camera. That moment was such a jolt. It had to be Divinely inspired. My memories and passion for holding a camera and looking through its lens flooded back, I mean I felt that inspiration down to my soul.

I bought that camera, took some classes at a local junior college, and it’s been clickety-click, ever since. Photography gave me a voice I couldn’t find any other way. Capturing moments in time: an idea I make up, or something that is unfolding in front of me (a wedding, family photos, senior pictures, or wandering around a neighborhood in Havana, Denver, Peru or Paris).

I love my clients. 

Each and every one has changed me, and with them and my camera, we have made magic and stopped time.  www.bethphotograpy.com

Jill’s story.

Once I realized a bilateral mastectomy was inevitable, I wanted to document the Me I had known for the past 30 years, so I reached out to Beth Sanders to take photos of the pain and grieving I was going through.

Stage 3 breast cancer was my diagnosis on June 4, 2020. I have no family history of cancer so this was a complete shock. I expected dementia or a heart attack to disrupt my life, not cancer. 

Twenty weeks of chemotherapy before surgery gave me plenty of time to think about what it means to be a woman and to have breasts. The sexuality and allure of the female anatomy, along with all of the layers of psychology that go along with it regularly came up when thinking about and talking about breast cancer. And of course, there is the evolutionary necessity that breasts provide for our offspring’s survival which helped ground my thought process from spinning out of control. My breasts have served their purpose in attracting a partner and in nourishing my children. For the sake of ridding my body of a cancer that would spread and eventually kill me, I felt like I needed to “offer them up” to prolong my life. That’s when I started thinking about how to convey this eminent change.

I was already feeling like an alien with my hair gone from chemo, and choosing to proceed with a double mastectomy was a no-brainer, but I still went through all of the emotions of grief as I came to terms with this unplanned alteration. Some even call it an amputation. I had become very comfortable in my body, enjoying the power and confidence it had given me. Now I’m questioning whether breasts are even needed to attract a mate. From a primal point of view, perhaps, but from an intellectual perspective, no. 

The photos Beth took for me represent the “offering up” of my breasts and nipples to rid my body of cancer. She captured the vulnerability I was feeling, an emotion I rarely show. She brought out some of the rawness I was holding inside and every time I look at these pictures, I get the same pang in my heart and gut. I am one woman and yet I am every woman. I’m so thankful I reached out to Beth to document this critical point in my life. I draw strength from the experience which remarkably brings more calm to my entire state of being.