My Life with Claire Barrett: 'I've photographed the breasts of 30 women, all of whom shared their stories with me'

Claire Barrett's Bare Truth initiative came about in response to the complicated relationship she once had with her body.

Claire Barrett, who has undertaken the Bare Truth Project. Picture Dan Linehan

To the uninitiated, I might have seemed like any other house guest, sipping endless cups of tea and engaging in casual chatter.

While I enjoyed the same luxuries that visitors so often do, this house call was different. I was here to photograph the homeowner’s breasts for a project that had been a long time in the making.

The Bare Truth initiative came about in response to the complicated relationship I once had with my body.

My hope was to create a space for women to share stories about their breasts without fear of identification. 

I would be photographing their breasts — and breasts only.

Over the last 12 months, I have photographed the breasts of 30 women, all of whom shared their unique and wonderful stories with me. 

I had heard about similar projects in the UK. One photographer managed to get 100 women on board for her project. 

That said, their population is much bigger than ours and I wondered if Ireland was ready for something like this.

It was my battle with an eating disorder called orthorexia that inspired the project. 

The condition results in an obsessive focus on the purity of foods. Coming through this redefined the way I look at my body. 

Over the years, I lost a lot of weight. I lost my breasts. At one stage, I didn’t even require a bra.

The turning point came around 2017 when someone that my family and I knew passed a remark about my eating habits. 

It was just one of those moments. I think everyone up to that point had wanted to say something but they didn’t know how. 

At that point, I didn’t want to listen. I wanted to tell everyone that I was fine. I lost 6st in the false belief that being thinner would make me happier.

To this day, I also experience premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome. 

The physical pain that brought about reinforced the disconnection I had with my body. 

My recovery from orthorexia was all about loving my new and stronger body. That included my breasts. 

Claire Barrett, with one of the pictures taken for the Bare Truth Project.

I could have picked any body part to focus on for this project but the breasts are such a beautiful organ.

The women who replied to my call-out to be photographed taught me so much. There is a storyteller in everyone and I was both glad and honoured that they trusted me with their stories.

There was such a myriad of tales, some of them heartbreaking but all beautiful. 

Having a picture taken of just your boobs might seem like quite a bold thing to do. It’s probably not something the participants involved would otherwise have done.  However, it is these bold experiences and everything we go through in life that make us who we are.

Some of the stories are sadly linked to losing a child. Others focus on the participant’s journey with breastfeeding.

One friend asked if I would document her breast cancer journey. This turned into something bigger than the project.

I took her picture around the time of the diagnosis. Soon afterwards, she was catapulted into surgery.

I took pictures after her surgery and met her a few months down the road. She wanted to recognise the changes that were happening with her body.

I WANTED to be the person people confided in but I was also aware that I wasn’t a counsellor. 

I didn’t want to open a can of worms for people and leave them with more trauma than they came to me with. 

It was important to me that anyone participating really wanted to be involved. If they didn’t, then that was fine too.

I love the fact that the project is anonymous because it opened up the floor for people. 

It also reminds us that this could be anybody’s story. You could be looking at your mother, a friend, or a neighbour, without even realising it. 

It’s just another reminder that we need to be kind and devoid of judgement. You never know what somebody is going through. 

I see that with my own journey. A lot of people thought I was fine when I wasn’t. There was no way of knowing otherwise.

The importance of rawness and honesty in the project was paramount. I didn’t use Photoshop or edit the photographs. 

I wanted the images to match the rawness of the stories. These pictures are real because I want people to know that bodies have stretch marks. They have dimples and texture and that’s OK.

Yes, people want to see a change in their bodies but they also want to see a change in the world and around body acceptance. In some ways, I think these 30 were all part of that change.

For a preview of the project, follow Claire’s Instagram page — @baretruth. Claire hopes to feature stories and photographs from the project in a book.