The Family Imprint is an intimate story of my family, as my parents underwent parallel treatments for stage-four cancer. The story is about life and love more than cancer and death. In a sense, it reads and feels like a scrapbook—and is filled with decades of saved loved letters, keepsakes, and other clues about our lives, enriching the larger story which I had been photographing for a few years already. The project, which was formally known as Cancer Family Ongoing, has been published nationally and internationally, receiving international awards and recognition. Additionally, the work has been featured in multiple pieces in The New York Times.

Nancy Borowick (b. 1985) is a humanitarian photographer currently based on the island of Guam. She is a graduate of the Documentary Photography and Photojournalism program at the International Center of Photography and holds a degree in Anthropology and Photography from Union College.

Over the last 10 years, Nancy narrowed the focus of her work, telling stories of illness and personal relationships, using compassion, humility, and trust as tools to connect with and explore the lives of her subjects. Nancy’s most recent focus has been her parents’ battles with cancer.

She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has also been featured in the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times Lens Blog, CNN, National Geographic PROOF, Time Magazine, Photo District News, the Washington Post, Stern Magazine, and Newsweek Japan. In February of 2016, she was awarded 2nd prize in the Long Term Projects category in World Press Photo and was recently awarded the Arnold Newman Prize in New Directions in Photographic Portraiture, the Eddie Adams Workshop Award in Innovation in Visual Storytelling, and Honorable Mention in the NPPA Best of Photojournalism competition in the Contemporary Issues Story category. In 2014, Borowick was named one the Best of ASMP featured photographers as well as one of Lens Culture’s Top 50 Emerging Talents.

Her Cancer Family, Ongoing project was presented at the Visa Pour l’Image in Perpignan, France in 2014 and the following year, 2015, was exhibited at the festival. Her work has also been exhibited at the Look 3 Photography Festival in the USA, the Obscura Photo Festival in Malaysia, the Angkor Photography Festival in Cambodia, the Guate photo Festival in Guatemala, the Oberstdorfer Fotogipfel Photo festival in Germany, and the International Photo Festival Leiden in Holland. In 2016, Nancy presented at the Norrlandsdagarna Photo Festival in Sweden and the work was also exhibited at the Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism in Germany. The Cancer Family project was recently exhibited in Spain at the Xavier Miserach Biennial as well as at over 100 locations around the world as part of the World Press Photo winners show. In 2017 the work will continue to be exhibited in locations in the US and in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and France.

In the Spring of 2016, Borowick raised $65,313 USD with the help of 740 backers through a Kickstarter campaign created to fund the development of her upcoming book, The Family Imprint, based on the Cancer Family project, available for purchase in 2017.