©Beauty Out of Damage is registered with the Library of Congress. All rights reserved.
This website is dedicated to a photographic series entitled " Beauty Out of Damage" which addressed the Breast Cancer Epidemic of the early 90s after the artist, Matuschka, lost her right breast. These self-portraits were taken between 1991 & 1994 and were unique to the era being the first of their kind to be published world-wide. When The New York Times printed the controversial picture on the right, the breast cancer movement was launched, sparking an international conversation about woman's health, image, activism and acceptance of disfigured bodies. The publication of Beauty out of Damage remains a defining moment in history. Its impact continues to resonate across visual culture, medicine, and feminist discourse until this day.
In 2003 and again in 2011, LIFE Magazine featured "Beauty Out of Damage" in its special edition, "100 Photographs That Changed the World". That same year, The New York Times and the Aperture Foundation included "Beauty Out of Damage" in the book The New York Times Magazine Photographs, showcasing 250 of the most important images published by the magazine over a 30-year period.
By the mid-1990s, Matuschka's portfolio addressing breast cancer awareness was widely published internationally and "Beauty Out of Damage" became one of the most published photographs in the world, appearing in hundreds of international publications, books, exhibitions, television programmes and documentaries. Additional images from the portfolio were embraced internationally. Four decades after its debut, "Beauty Out of Damage" and other photographs from the series remain in circulation — frequently cited in academic and medical journals. Images from the "Beauty Out of Damage" series are held in numerous museum collections and continue to be exhibited and published around the world — a lasting symbol of resilience, resistance, and the redefinition of what's acceptable in bodily appearance.
The New York Times Sunday Magazine Cover, 1993
"It was not simply nudity that shocked early viewers of Edouard Manet¹s"Dejeuner sur l¹herbe." The tumble of clothing beside her make clear that the woman in the foreground has literally "stripped herself bare" before her male companions. And as though to add insult to injury, she stares boldly toward us, radiantly self-confident and perhaps even a trifle amused by the reactions she provokes. It is difficult to think of a work with a comparable power to weak bourgeois hypocrisies until, more than a century later, Matuschka broke topless taboos with her appearance on the cover of ³the NewYork Times Magazine.² In a breathtaking portrait of the artist produced after her mastectomy, an entire generation was sensitized to one of the greatest hush-hush conspiracies of the 20th Century."
–Dr. David Galloway From "The Body in the 20th Century
"The photograph stirred a conversation about the scandal of ignoring breast cancer by insisting that breast cancer happened and that people should do something about that."
–Rosemarie Garland-Thomson From "The Feminist Film Philosophy Reader"
The New York Times Sunday Magazine Cover, 1993
The Hand, 1992
Vote For Yourself, 1991
COVERS 1992-2010
EL mundo cover and 1 other
All photographs displayed on this website are copyrighted by Matuschka. All rights are reserved. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or distribution of these images is strictly prohibited without prior permission.