ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the work that women do to re-image 'missing' photographs and the role of absent images in creating boundaries around what selves are available to be remembered. It examines how the materiality of photographs is implicated in the biographical work done by women undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer as they narrate their experiences. For some, getting their appearance back to exactly how it was before chemotherapy was seen as the only way to repair the biographical disruption precipitated by the treatment, for others their changed appearance was re-integrated into their sense of self. The photographs were used to explore the continuities and changes between past and present selves, in charting the shifts through biographical disruption and repair. The chapter discusses the role of photographs in remembering and forgetting by exploring how photographs facilitate the work of social remembering and enable the doing of biographical work around the shift from illness to recovery.
