Sarita Rampersad forks cancer, celebrates life in photos

KIERAN ANDREW KHAN

Photographer Sarita Rampersad began her career in another field entirely, reading for her law degree at the St Augustine and Cave Hill campuses of UWI. However, it was not something she felt that she loved as a discipline and when both her parents died, a few years apart, she knew that she had to follow her instincts and her passions into another industry entirely.

“I realised from their passing that life was in fact short, and after chatting with a friend of mine who worked in advertising, I decided to try my hand at copywriting instead. It seemed like something I would enjoy more than law,” she recalled.

Taking out a blank sheet of paper over 20 years ago, she wrote a new direction for her life – creating copy for five ads and sending them to several local agencies along with her CV. She was hired by one, CMB, and quickly moved through the ranks into TV commercial production before trying her hand at photography for a pitch that a subsequent agency had to prepare for a client.

“My boss noted that I had an eye for photography and I decided to further my studies in it, with a mix of local and online courses, including Desmond Clarke’s course at UWI, and that was where I got a solid foundation. If you want to break the rules, you first have to learn them.”

An iconoclast at heart, the photographer also shot to internet fame for her creation of the Trini “steups” emoji in 2018.

Today, she faces a bigger challenge with the same attitude of defiance that characterises her life.

Two months ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and after going through the motions, tests, diagnoses and treatment options, decided she would tackle this as she does all things: with wit, knowledge and an open mind.

“I decided that cancer wasn’t going to happen to me, I was going to happen to cancer – it was time to soldier up.”

She recently shaved her head ahead of starting chemotherapy treatment, adding a colour so that the treatment would not claim her crown.

“I was in the middle of re-doing my roof at home when I moved into my aunt’s home in August this year. At that time, I was waking up around 5 am to sort out the construction happening at home, so I started to shoot photos of kitchen utensils that belong to my aunt, in the morning light. I loved how the light and shadow played with them,” she recalled.

That series became known as Light and Shadow and was somewhat prescient for her.

“A few weeks later, I found a lump under my arm that felt like a pulled muscle, but no treatment for it worked.”

On the recommendation of her physician, Dr Jacqui Sabga, she had all the requisite tests done from ultrasounds to mammograms and later, on the advice of radiologist Dr Martin Peters, a full body CT scan and biopsy.

“Every doctor I saw – Drs Sabga, Peters, Rampersad, Capildeo – are brilliant and accessible, and for that I am grateful.

“The CT revealed an area for further investigation in my brain, so we then did a brain MRI which revealed that my brain, in medical terms, was ‘unremarkable.’ I have never been happier to hear my brain and boob described as unremarkable,” she added with trademark tongue-in-cheek humour.

“There was this point at which I had to really face my own mortality – since if the cancer had spread to my brain, it would not have been great news – but in hindsight, facing the worst possibility and having it downgraded to the current diagnosis of HER2 positive breast (and lymph node) cancer, which was more treatable, allowed me space to process and to plan. I made the decision to trust science.”

Signing on at the St James Cancer Treatment Centre meant that some of her treatment costs would be covered financially – but not all, so Rampersad created a fundraising drive – selling prints of her Light and Dark series alongside other food sales (including a barbecue sale called BoobieQue) through a website and idea called #ForkCancer.

“The process of having cancer – knowing that there was this thing growing inside of me that could kill me – at first it was horrifying and depressing. But then I thought about my niece and knew I had to stick around to see her all grown up and it flipped a switch in my head. I realised that I really want to live. I’m not entertaining an alternative.

“Coming off of the Light and Shadow series, one of the images that stood out was the image of the fork. Plus, I love food. So it seemed appropriate to name it that way.”

Though warned that the name may put off more conservative older folks, she says they turned into some of her biggest supporters and very much in on the joke behind the name.

What people may not realise behind the images she shares online is that Rampersad fits the archetype of an adventurer at heart. The 48-year-old once cracked her sternum diving off the cliff at the famous Rick’s Café in Jamaica, due to some bad jumping advice, but managed to pull herself back to shore (before being hospitalised for a stint). She has climbed industry silos to get the shot she wants in her mind and is equally at home hanging off the edge of a helicopter, hundreds of feet in the air shooting Coast Guard drills, as she is capturing heads of state or corporate meetings. In short, it’s not that she lacks fear, she simply knows how best to silence it and channel it creatively.

“I thought all those years of doing crazy things would bring me to face my own mortality – but they didn’t. So, I won’t let cancer do that either.”

She credits her doctors and the staff at the St James Cancer Treatment Centre highly and reminds anyone who is dealing with cancer to read and be informed as much as they can about their particular type of cancer. She also consulted with Dr Adriel Ramnarine at the Ishtar Centre to find natural ways to boost the efficacy of her treatments.

“My HER2 diagnosis means that I have a cancer with a strong growth factor – but one that isn’t hormonal...so there are ways and drugs to treat with it. But when you consider the food you eat or any supplements you take, you must read and understand how they impact your body or your treatment,” she cautioned.

Rampersad has shifted dramatically to a diet that is higher in fruits and vegetables and less dependent on meat. She aims to also eat as much organic food as possible and says this change alone has helped.

“I just started with chemo and despite thinking I was spared the worst of it, I did have a bout of bone pain – and let me tell you, I barely slept those days that I had it.”

Still, she pushes through.

Since her full-time commitment to photography in 2009, Rampersad has been at the forefront of the development of the industry, working first with a team of other like-minded and photographers she met via the online forum phototrini.com to help foster, and teach other professionals as well as herself through workshops and networking.

She’s helped raise the bar in industrial, commercial, energy, food and portraiture photography too, aside from her personal love of landscapes and the lifestyle and people of the Caribbean.

And now the adventurer-creative is charting a new course in helping others shed the fear associated with cancer and instead rally the call to #ForkCancer.