TOKYO-2016

CHOCOLATE WOMEN

  • Photographer
    Carola Cunzolo

Statistics. It is estimated that in the world 176 millions women of childbearing age suffer from endometriosis. In Italy we are 3 millions, but this number is underestimated because it takes into account only blown cases. Pain. Endometriosis means pain. pelvic pain that invalidates and paralyzes. Pain during urination, defecation, sexual intercourse. Pain for a colitis or for the periods of constipation alternating with diarrhea. Pain of a miscarriage. Sometimes it hits you since awakening and you have to spend hours lying in a fetal position, praying hard that the pain can last less than last time. For doctors this is a disease, but people around you do not treat it as such: it is a pain that leaves no sign, it is a pain that affects silently. Timing If no one speaks of healing it is because there is not a cure. Trying desperately to heal, the truth is that you can only go by trial and mistakes. But above all: if a cure is not there, everything can become a cure. This pill, the gynecologist, the friend who knows how to listen, the boyfriend who waits, the mother who can understand. Months pass, years pass, until you see menopause as the one possible end. Or hysterectomy, if you really can not wait. As long as you suffer from endometriosis, the time will never be on your side. The Photographies: “Chocolate Women”. The disease is also known under the name of “chocolate cysts” given to the dark color of their blood content. In women, the blood flows and regenerates. Within us, he rots inside. Within us, it digs and crumbles. It digs in relationships, digs in pleasures, he delves into the work. And day after day it crumbles the opportunity to give life to their life. The women I photographed, women like me who suffer from endometriosis, they wear a red garment: the color of blood, the blood that rots in our body and does not want to leave. I did ask them to wear a red garment because I wanted to bring out their disease, I wanted to give importance to these women, to make visible a disease that shows no obvious signs. Years are passing by, they are 7 years now and no one recognizes my pain. There are painful mornings, when you take a pill from a blister of Tora-dol, and you take it whenever the pain becomes unbearable. There are antithrombotic stockings, memories of an operation hidden in a drawer. All these women have found a way to move forward, to exorcise the problem. These photos are my way to express it: I wanted to show women who suffer from a disease that is not always recognized and cannot be cured, women who do not break up even when the pain tries to bend them, I wanted to show their faces because as with any disease, the disease is the main character, the disease identifies us, before a name and a story.

Born in 1983 in Turin. I’m an art director and I love photography. I started photographing objects and things, but I understand that you can create greater empathy with those who looks at a picture, when you are in front of a human being in his/her extravagance, his/her defects and peculiarities. I love black and white. I love the synthesis of a picture. In my photographs I try to mix these elements as much as possible