Peekskill Resident Directs Film on Ballerina Man's 'Tutu Project'

Peekskill filmmaker Ron Egatz has written and directed a short film featuring the now famous man who has turned self-portrait photographs of himself in a pink tutu into a non-profit organization that supports women with breast cancer.

The ballerina in the images is Bob Carey, a commercial photographer from Arizona whose wife was diagnosed with breast cancer nine-years ago. For fun, Carey started photographing himself in a pink tutu following her diagnoses, images she then shared with fellow patients undergoing treatment. Carey is lacking the grace, posture, elegance and every other ballerina characteristic, which forces any viewer to smile at a photo of him in a tutu. The photos became so popular that people bought them and the Tutu Project was born.

All proceeds from the prints go to the non-profit Carey Foundation, which provides transportation, meals, and other daily needs to women undergoing breast cancer treatment. Images from the Tutu Project have been collected in the recently self-published book Ballerina.

Egatz saw Carey on CNN and other mainstream news shows and was moved by his cause and impressed by his series of self-portraits. Carey agreed to working with Egatz on a short film about the Tutu Project.

“I was especially drawn to the way he would transform himself physically for several different series of self-portraits he's done, starting from back when he was in Arizona, decades ago,” Egatz said. “You could see the progression from that work right into his first experiments with the tutu. His art, plus the compelling story of how the tutu photos became therapy for his wife and her fellow chemotherapy patients, were two things which made me feel so much, I was reminded of what it really means to be human. I was moved by how Linda Carey's showing of the photos snowballed and eventually became a project to create the book Ballerina.”

Egatz’ mother is a long-time survivor of breast cancer which made this project a little more personal for him. “Even if she wasn't, I'd still want to help get these images out to a wider audience,” Egatz said.

Egatz produced the film, which PocketWizard underwrote. PocketWizard is a company that makes photography equipment, which happens to be the type Carey uses for his photos. “(PocketWizard was) similarly impressed by his art and moved by his story and purpose,” Egatz said.

Following many prime time television appearances, Carey now appears in Egatz short film, which was released last week.

“As Bob says in my film, everyone knows someone who has gone through this or another type of cancer,” Egatz said. “This disease touches us all. Bob's work brings a smile to people's faces. That's one of the best things art can do.”

Images and prints from the Tutu Project can be found at the Tutu Project site http://www.thetutuproject.com/. Ballerina, other Tutu Project gear, and donation information can be found here:
http://www.thetutuproject.com/support-the-tutu-project/ . Bob Carey's photography can be seen at his site http://bobcarey.com/.

You can also see Ron Egatz’ video on Vimeo and YouTube.

About Ron Egatz: Ron Egatz is winner of the Glimmer Train Poetry Award and the Greenburgh Poetry Award. Beneath Stars Long Extinct, a collection of poems, was published by Red Hen Press. He has been widely published in literary reviews and anthologies. He lives with his wife Jenn in a Peekskill art loft. Together they write the food blog Reel Chow atwww.reelchow.com/blog/. Egatz can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ronegatz and at www.egatz.com.