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As McLamb turned to leave, Horwitz raced down the stairs.

"Stay," she pleaded. "I don't want to do this. But I have to do this."

They settled on the dining room for a backdrop. The long windows yielded dreamy, diffuse light.

After 10 years documenting weddings, McLamb knows how a woman should stand to look her loveliest -- shoulders turned toward the camera, hips away, arms a little out from the body. This was no different.

And yet it was.

Horwitz unbuttoned her shirt, revealing a chest flat as a young child's. Three-inch-long scars carved twin swaths diagonally from where Horwitz's breasts used to be toward her armpits. Horwitz felt ugly and self-conscious. McLamb felt sick. But she grabbed the 1950s-era Rolleiflex she'd chosen for its artsy feel and started shooting. She steadied herself by focusing on the lighting, the composition, the exposure.

The first photo shoot was the most difficult. It was awkward and tentative and hard to make conversation.

Gradually, the sessions grew more relaxed. As Horwitz's new breasts began to take shape, McLamb would compliment her. They're so perky, she'd say, and they'd laugh.

The unsettling truth

But Horwitz shuddered at how the photos captured the weight she'd put on from the drugs she took to stave off nausea during chemotherapy. She had cautioned McLamb against showing her face, but her belly was flabby, her waist undefined. She wanted the images retouched.

You can't, McLamb said. It wouldn't be truthful.

The photos, taken from the neck down, tell a black-and-white tale of loss and renewal. McLamb thinks they're beautiful, but not in the manner of a perfectly composed shot of the sun setting.

It's Horwitz's freckled chest, her scar tissue, her brand-new breasts with their surgically refined swells in the photos. But it's hard to see them and not think of your girlfriend, your wife, your sister -- yourself. It is hard to look at them but also hard to look away.

One day, Horwitz told McLamb she wanted the photos to be more than a personal documentary. She wanted others to see them, women like her losing the essence of womanhood just as they were dating, getting married, starting families.

She decided to make knowledge her crusade. She went online and learned that pamphlets like the one she envisioned existed in other states. As far as she could tell, there was nothing like them in the Triangle. She appealed to the Triangle affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which awarded her a grant to share the photos and, through them, her story with other young women.

What has emerged are 6-by-6-inch booklets featuring step-by-step photos of the reconstruction and explanatory text. They are dedicated to her mother. It's up to Horwitz to find homes for them, so she has begun calling patient representatives at local hospitals and doctors' offices. Monday, she has arranged to leave the first batch at the Rex Cancer Center.

She has also ventured into cyberspace, where come summertime she will post a virtual version of the booklet. "This is your life," reads a message on the home page of www.myselftogetheragain.org. "This is your body. Don't let this disease take it from you."

Horwitz has never been particularly modest. But online, she thought privacy might be a good idea, so the breasts in the pictures will belong to "Denise."

Here, in a community where she was diagnosed, treated and made whole again, Debbie Horwitz is not afraid to claim them for her own.

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