EJ Hassan Photography

Collage play this month for …could sit and do this for hours. ✂️📔🖌️🗒️

I am happy to be supporting CCP this year in their annual fundraising campaign. Sadly CCP no longer receives funding from local, state or federal government and this means their mission to celebrate and support photography, and photographers at all levels, has just become all the more difficult.

You can buy a limited edition print of my work from now until 28th July, via the CCP website. All the funds raised go directly to supporting exhibitions, events, artists fees, production costs, and future planning.

Go to www.ccp.org.au or ccp_australia for more details and to buy the photographs.

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A beautiful day immersing in art direction and creative dancing with her camera. These days of creating and playing have become such an antidote for when it comes to living with cancer. Most days it’s a struggle to do basically anything but picking up a camera brings me the greatest joy.

I am beyond grateful for these three angels , .therese.photography and .photography!!!! 🧡🩷🌸🩵 I am also incredibly thankful for every friend, family member and even those that I barely know for the kindness, care, generosity and love not only I, but my family have been showered in since being diagnosed last year in November. For a world that had a lot of evil in it right now, I feel touched that I have not only witnessed but experienced the most wonderful side of humans this past year. Communities of love are what keep people going…it has absolutely been the key to me staying strong and not feeling so alone in a marathon that crosses terrains unimaginable and feels like it will never end.

Thank you will never be enough, there really are no words to describe the love I have for all of you. Just know how deeply grateful I am for every one of you. 🧡🩷🌸🩵

Helpers, 2024

~ from my ongoing series ‘There are no sad gardeners here’.

🌸 There Are No Sad Gardeners Here 🌱

Chapter ~ Cake Week 🍰🧡

A non linear, ongoing body of work

✨ 2023 and beyond ✨

Fraternal twins
Same but different
Seven minutes
Pairs and perspectives
A second shot
Just one more

Cosmic love

Artist .art 〰️👁️〰️🧡〰️✨〰️🩵

Anyone else obsessed with disco balls and dancing…of the many things I wish could go back to normal are my ability to dance for hours and head to a gig.

I keep coming back to this image. I captured it in a random Aussie pub in the middle of nowhere, on the way to Jindabyne to take the boys snowboarding in the Winter of two years ago.

Life before cancer feels so far away now.

Missing live concerts and dancing all night long with my boys and my sisters.

My baby sister Nikki 🩵🧡

From the archives ~ Kai 2021

A brainstorm of twos
Pairs of twins
Twin set of balloons
Two hands holding a balloon twice
Double
2
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Lenny 2023

Veil in the grapevines 👰🍇

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🧡🩷🌸 👠

Twos 💜💚

Archival photograph of my Pardy and his twin brother 👯‍♀️

Feeling the itch to finally begin my twin series…thank you for the gentle nudge.

Our family is full of twins. 👯‍♂️

From my ‘There are no sad gardeners here’ series 🌸

🖤 🤍 📷

Did you know June is Bowel Cancer Awareness month? Did you know that early onset bowel cancer is the deadliest cancer in Australia for 25 to 44 year olds. This statistic still shocks me. 🍎

June has become both a very important month and a very triggering month for myself and my family. It’s also the month a year ago I really started noticing my body starting to do weird things. People often ask me about symptoms, there were plenty but not once did I consider it would be cancer. I was too young and too healthy, or so I thought.

Last November, at age 41, I was diagnosed with Stage IV Early Onset Bowel Cancer. No family history, no preexisting health conditions. To this day I still have moments where I am completely perplexed as to why I have been gifted such a horrendous disease and burden. I try not to bury myself too far in these thoughts as they get quite overwhelming. There isn’t one day where I can go back to my life without cancer, it will be with my family and I forever.

I have shared a few little bits about the past several months here but mostly this space is for my photography and art. It’s a space I can escape. It has also been a space of support - so much incredible support here, alongside the incredible live and support in my physical space. Beyond grateful for this. 🧡 This month I want to share more. So I will share but share in the way I know how, through pictures…with some words if you feel like you want to know more. And if you don’t, that’s okay you can just keep looking at my pictures.

By sharing, it’s my hope I can raise awareness, tell parts of my stories, destigmatise the ‘sh*tty’ parts people would rather not talk about when it comes to your bowels and most importantly ensure no one else has to endure what the past year has been like for my family and I. It has been brutal to say the least. It has seriously sucked.

Bowel Cancer Australia uses the red apple logo to symbolise the charity's bowel cancer message: bowel cancer is treatable and beatable when detected early. It represents an abstract of a human bowel. Anyone who knows me well knows I love a good metaphor. The small hole in the apple is caused by a worm. If detected early and removed, the worm is unable to continue affecting the apple or the health of the tree. Much the same as bowel cancer for humans. So many of my images and videos this months will most likely consist of apples. 🍎

I think mostly I want you to be aware…this cancer doesn’t discriminate and it could happen to you. Prevention and early detection are paramount - advocating for your body is the most important thing. If you don’t have your health, nothing else really matters.

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💫 Over the weekend I reached out to Andy Adams who writes and curates - an online newsletter I have been receiving for years. He put a call out for photographs capturing the unforgettable light show we were gifted in our sky on Saturday 11th May, 2024.

Andy has a way with words and images and a quest to share this with the world. His support for creatives is deeply beautiful. What started as a photo exchange quickly turned into a heartfelt and earnest conversation around my cancer diagnosis and the way photography and art has cocooned this, not only for myself but for my family to process and escape.

I am beyond grateful to be featured in Andy’s newsletter this week on Substack. I have met incredible people via this platform and have formed some extremely strong friendships that have been a life source this last 9 months. I have shared threads of my story here but I am feeling ready to share more…this feels like a good start. 🦋 Thank you Andy for your gentle kindness. 🧡

✨ To read please use the link below or see my stories. 🌙

https://www.flakphoto.news/p/ej-hassan-seeing-the-southern-lights

My everything 🧡🩷

Captured remotely on the by my incredible friend 🩵

Mama 🧡🩷💜

Magical! ✨

This last six months I have been searching high and low for signs, signs that there is something greater happening in the invisible layers we live and breathe, in this very confusing world and there have been many, many that have gotten me through some of the hardest days I could have imagined but am I sadly living. I said to my husband I wanted our Mothers’ Day weekend this year to be unforgettable for my boy’s…we went on a star gazing adventure with my sister and her husband…unforgettable.

Our world, universe etched in our hearts forever. ♾️ 💜 🌟

Home = Family = Traditions 🏠🧡

Kai 2024 🐛

This kid was born for the 90’s…has a deep love for this era. Mothering is truly sublime when we walk and experience things together. I was very similar at 14, the mirroring is beautiful. Teenagers are complex creatures, wild at times but the most incredible species of human.

Music is everything at this age…it becomes a way of communicating. His most favourite song…and in 1996 this was also mine when I was 14 and was the first full album I saved up for…still know it by heart today.

Treading into the next era…careers night at school last night. How is it that I have a near adult about to step into the adult world…it blows my mind. What will you be when you grow up? There has been a lot of adulting in the last six months, helping care for me in the most compassionate and profound yet 14 year old way. I wish so badly this time for him didn’t have to be part of his story but the seeds and threads are already there and have begun their growth and spinning. I’m in awe, constantly. 🧡

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Quiet moments…a mama and her offspring. 🦢🧡

Lenny and his new puppy ~ 2023