- 88 DAYS -
A photoGraphiC DIARY
88 Days is a deeply personal photographic diary that began on September 19, 2019, with one photo per day.
The original idea was to give myself a daily goal during an especially difficult period, both physically and mentally: my chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. To maintain a connection with creativity and help myself hold on, I decided to post each day on my Instagram account a photo drawn from my archives, reflecting my state of mind or highlighting a meaningful or positive detail from the day - so as to could cling to these small moments of grace during the hardest times.
I didn’t tell anyone about this project, neither during nor after the illness, wanting to keep it private. Yet it was a way for me to communicate with the outside world and express myself during moments of profound solitude.
This journal lasted 88 days. Toward the end, the posts grew sparse due to my physical weakness and eventually stopped shortly after my fifth chemotherapy session, followed by a hospitalization. At the time, I considered this “project” a failure and set it aside.
Today, with hindsight and after a long recovery, I feel ready to share this diary as a personal testimony of the everyday life and emotional state of someone going through illness.
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The photographs, numbered from J1 to J88 (and C1 to C5 for each chemotherapy day), remain visible on my Instagram account (@khanh.es), accompanied by hashtags reflecting my thoughts and feelings. Some are archived (but not deleted).
My goal would be to make a book and an exhibition enriched with notes written during treatment, with the aim of offering a different perspective on cancer, to help break the taboo around this illness, and fight against the isolation of patients.