Two weeks ago today my amazing daughter Sela joined my family (in the outside world.) I have been looking at the many images I have taken of families at the births of their children, and contemplating the enormity of the experience- both on a personal, social, and cultural level. I find that the work I make for clients and the body of documentary work I am making on the sociology of birth both exist in a dual space- the vacuum of personal and often medical spaces in which they are shot, and in my camera, but also in a larger emotional and cultural spaces of society.
I see an emerging picture of the struggle to bring a new human life into the world, and also a slowly focusing sense of what it is that we value in birth.
Birth bares us. It strips away pretense, reveals our true nature. Passionate, fierce, vulnerable, afraid and brave. The gesture of birth is raw. Body fluids, skin, caresses, machines. We dance with the technology that guards life and pushes us to question the capability of the human body.
Breath is the goal...
Steadies the heart of the fetus... keeps the galloping of heart monitor steady, the mother at her center.
Fills the lungs, displaces the primordial ocean of the aminion world- makes us land mammals.
Caption: Breath
I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
-Sylvia Plath
© Lisa Gendron
beautiful photo lisa!
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