David Jay's portraits speak a lot about fear. He is widely known as a notable fashion photographer, but his work on more dark subjects really shows the depth of his work. I was really drawn to the work he did on breast cancer survivors. He said that after a friend was diagnosed, the photos were his method of "confront[ing] what he didn’t understand, coping with a change so strong and so scary that he witnessed in a close one." Most of his work is done in black and white, with a few color photos, but his portraits are taken with a variety of angles and settings.
Jay's fascination with scars and surviving also comes through in a series called "The Unknown Soldier". In this he photographs severely injured soldiers, who's wounds have healed into intense scars, etc. What I find very dynamic about his photographs are the variety of subject matter within each. He doesn't just take somber pictures of the men and woman, but he takes candid ones of them laughing, with their children, and sometimes just doing simple things. Jay's work focus not only on our fears of mortality, loss, sickness, and pain, but he also delves into ideas on strength, relationships, and the ability to overcome. Jay's work challenges and comments on very controversial and almost taboo subject matter and that's what makes his photos so strong.
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