Embracing The Stars - Breathe, 2025

Ben Battersby  

Ben Battersby is a British photographer based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Born in London in 1972, he spent three decades behind the camera as a cinematographer before turning his lens inward to create BREATHE — an ongoing photographic project that confronts the intimate reality of chronic illness and survival.    After multiple life-saving surgeries, a liver transplant, and now undergoing continuous chemotherapy, BREATHE has become both a record and a lifeline — a way of making sense of a body that has been repeatedly rebuilt, and a life that refuses to stop. Through self-portraiture, nocturnal landscapes, and quiet still lifes, the work searches for light inside the darkness, for moments of grace within exhaustion.    Each image is an act of defiance — a breath taken against the odds. The series moves between fragility and strength, fear and acceptance, revealing the private resilience required to keep going when the future is uncertain. BREATHE is not only about illness; it is about the profound will to live, to love, and to keep creating, even when breath itself is hard-won.    The project has been internationally recognized, receiving Gold, Second Place, and Honorable Mention at the 2025 Prix de la Photographie Paris (PX3); Photographer of the Year and People's Choice (111k votes) at the 1839 Awards; and an Honorable Mention at the International Photography Awards (IPA). It has also been featured by Der Greif and selected for the 2024 Salón Nacional de Artes Visuales in Argentina.