David Fox, left, shows images to Mike Muller after taking pictures of Muller for the "Men, Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Photographic Journey" calendar.

Fight Pink–Las Vegas, Nv–Breast Cancer is rare in men.  Statistics show that men have a 1 in a 1000 chance of developing Breast Cancer in their lifetime.  Photographer David Fox decided to shoot a calender called  Men, Breast Cancer and the Environment a Photographic Journey that represents the single largest cluster of MEN known to have been diagnosed with Breast Cancer; they range from age 39 to 68.  They have two other common threads that tie them together; they were all Marines or sons of Marines, and they all lived at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, at some point in their lives.  To date 64 men have come forward with the same common threads.  David Fox thought it important to bring light to this subject matter.

“It’s people. It doesn’t really matter if it’s men or women,” said Fox. “The focus is the same, the environmental causes of breast cancer. That hasn’t changed and it never will.”

Still, the portraits the Brookline photographer shot in Boston this summer are statistically unusual. All 14 are men who have had breast cancer, and all have ties to Camp Lejeune, N.C., either from serving there as Marines or growing up on base.

“The 15th person,” a Marine sergeant major, “had lost his little girl to cancer. The calendar is actually dedicated to (her),” Fox said of his portraits featured in the 2011 Art beCAUSE calendar to benefit cancer research.

As with the 2010 “Illuminating the Survivor Spirit” calendar he shot for Art beCAUSE, featuring 15 New England women and Pete Devereaux, a Marine from North Andover who also appears in the new “Men, Breast Cancer and the Environment” calendar, Fox said he wanted to tell stories.

“I always want to put a face to it. They could be someone famous, or just someone who lives every day, who has a family, like we all do.

“It isn’t just a statistic.”

It’s people like his first wife, Toby, who was the mother of two young children when she died of breast cancer in 1991.

And Ellie Anbinder, a breast cancer survivor and executive director of the Framingham-based Art beCAUSE foundation that raises money for research into links between the environment and breast cancer.

And the men who are part of what Jim Fontella, a former Marine from Detroit featured in the calendar, calls “the largest male breast cancer cluster known.”

“My thought was how could I possibly have breast cancer? I’m a man,” said Teddy Richardson, a former Marine diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006.

“It was just complete shock and out of the blue,” said Mike Partain, who was diagnosed in 2007. “I was 39 years old when I was diagnosed.”

Partain knew it was unusual to be diagnosed with this disease, especially at such a young age. He started asking questions.

“We’ve gone from just me to 64 men with male breast cancer,” Partain said. “The only commonality that we have is that at some point in our life we either lived at Camp Lejeune or served at Camp Lejeune and we now have male breast cancer. That’s no accident.”

Partain is active in a group called The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten that is determined to solve the mystery of how so many military men have this unusual disease. He found a partner in the Boston-based Art Because Breast Cancer Foundation which funds research studying environmental links to breast cancer.

The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry is studying contamination in two water systems at Camp Lejeune and has established there was contamination in one system from 1957 to 1987.

More than 60 men with breast cancer and ties to Camp Lejeune have identified themselves to The Few, The Proud, The Forgotten, a Web-based advocacy group.

With the men involved in the photoshoot, “the logistics involved were a little more complex”  than when he photographed the primarily local “Illuminating the Survivor Spirit” subjects in his studio at Framingham’s Fountain Street Studios, said Fox. But hotels donated rooms in Boston, Art beCAUSE supporters helped with airfare and area restaurants donated food to make the two-day shoot at Boston’s Liberty Hotel a success.

Some of the men were apprehensive at first, he said.

“There was one gentleman who came to the session very hesitant about being photographed. Not (the process of) being photographed, but how it would be used in the marketplace. A couple of guys came up and talked to him and put him at ease.”

The men appreciated being able to compare notes with others who have walked in their shoes.

“Most guys don’t want to tell anyone they’ve got a woman’s disease,” Devereaux said after his photo session.

Before having a total radical modified mastectomy, “I never knew anything about breast cancer,” said Fontella.

“Of the 140,000 (Americans) diagnosed with breast cancer each year, only 1,000 are men,” said Anbinder, but the number seems to be rising.

A gallery show of photographs from the calendar shoot will move to the Art Institute of Philadelphia in February.

“Our hope and goal is to bring this show across the country,” said Fox, who will teach a class in Philadelphia to coincide with the exhibit. “The hope is students will go out and photograph survivors.

“But this project isn’t about me,” said Fox. “It’s about everyone who’s participated. It’s putting a face on this” thing called cancer.

It’s also about funding Art beCAUSE’s Seed the Scientist grants in hopes of pinpointing breast cancer’s causes.

A new grant winner will be announced at the foundation’s Oct. 14 annual fundraising gala at the Park Plaza hotel in Boston, which will feature celebrity chefs Michael Schlow and Ming Tsai, plus entertainment by James Montgomery and Friends and Ernie Boch Jr.’s Ernie and the Automatics.

Information on ordering calendars, $20 plus shipping, is available at www.artbecause.org

Click HERE to View the You Tube video of the photoshoot!

About David Fox

David Fox knows a few things about survival. After losing his wife to breast cancer when she was 34, Fox was left with a 1-year-old daughter, a 4-year-old son, and a fledgling photography business on the verge of going under. Grief was a constant companion, but the demands of caring for his children and tending to his livelihood kept Fox anchored.

Eighteen years later, as anyone who has experienced such a loss can attest, the process of healing continues. Shortly after his wife died Fox became involved with the American Cancer Society and other research and advocacy groups, donating his services as a photographer to further the cause. But it’s taken much longer for Fox to feel ready to launch the personal project he’s been dreaming about for nearly two decades: an exhibit of stark, black-and-white photos of men and women who are living with breast cancer.

Among the subjects are a pregnant woman, a former Marine, and — most poignant of all for Fox — a 34-year-old mother of two small children. Many models are identified by first name only to protect their privacy.

“The sessions are emotionally draining,’’ says Fox, who lives in Brookline, Massachusetts  and works in a Framingham, MA studio. “I have to park it in neutral or I couldn’t do what I’m doing. They’re being totally open and vulnerable. And my pain is ongoing. This has been a real healing thing for me, to be able to do something positive with the skills I have.’’

Please Visit David’s Studio  online by clicking www.davidfoxphotographer.com.  Photographer of Greater Boston and MetroWest Boston, the one source for all of your imaging needs. From large Corporate Events to smaller Social Events, from Commercial Photography to Personal Portraits, and everything in between, he provides the finest in professional photography with superior customer service, quality and artistry.