Pediatric Cancer Patients as their Heroes of New Book Imagines

So many fairy tales have dragons to slay, but the heroes here are real and so is the monster they all face.

 

“True Heroes: A Treasury of Modern-Day Fairy Tales” is a new book featuring brave pediatric cancer patients who are given a moment to escape reality by becoming characters in fairy tales.

Part of the treat was being photographed dressed as those characters in pictures as artful as anything seen on the cover of a magazine.

There's Carson, the boy with leukemia who's photographed in a dynamic moment to seem like a bull rider. There's Ellie, a sarcoma-stricken little girl who is surrounded by scrumptious treats for her shoot as a baker. There's Caimbre, the neuroblastoma patient who plays dress-up as a mermaid.

A fairy-tale featuring the kids accompanies each photo.

The project — which comes just in time for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September — was photographer Jonathan Diaz's way of ditching a meaningless career in fashion and wedding photography, he tells the Daily News.

 

"The images weren't telling compelling stories, they weren't beneficial to anyone," Diaz, 36, recalls. He wanted to take pictures that people "could derive something from."

Diaz, who lives in Salt Lake City, connected with children’s cancer charity Millie’s Princess Foundation, where officials loved the idea. Word soon spread to other families with kids fighting illness.

 

Diaz eventually had to limit the number of children he could work with for the project.

He began each chapter by meeting a child’s family.

"I really wanted to get to the core of who the kids were and what they loved to do," he says.

 

Local companies pitched in too, offering money to pay for costumes, props and scenery for the photo shoots, which Diaz says were "emotional."

He recalls one especially challenging shoot with a young girl named Jordan, who dreamed of being Alice in Wonderland, but had just weeks to live.

"It was really a roller coaster because she was very up and down," Diaz remembers. "She really wanted to do it despite how much pain she was in. It took three people to hold her up. I think she knew what she was doing was important — it would touch people's lives."

Diaz started a nonprofit charity, Anything Can Be, so that he can continue to help sick children realize their dreams this way. His goal is to photograph every sick kid in Utah, and then expand to other states.

"I didn't know any kids with cancer and it's incredible how you get involved and it becomes your cause," he said. "It's become a cause that I'm very passionate about, that I want to continue."