NYC Pregnancy Photographer Maternity Photography

Pregnancy photography in NYC. Maternity photographer NYC.

Gravidity includes total pregnancies regardless of outcome. Parity is the number of live births one has completed.

The numbers G9P2 come from my own mother who was pregnant 9 times and had 2 children. 7 miscarriages are in her birth story. She never made a big deal about it, I don’t think it really bothered her. She is one of the lucky ones. But it got me thinking.

Culturally, we have been fed a steady diet of misinformation. Glowy, women dripping in warmth. Being handed a chubby, crying baby in the delivery room is a marketing device designed to keep us subjugated. It is a boot on our necks. Since Dobbs the pregnant are being forced to increasingly waive their own care over that of a fetus under literal pain of death.

Pregnancies aren’t always joyous. The concept of maternal mental health is vague but why? Perhaps because various communities carry stigma around risk. Ignoring it is a disservice to the pregnant. Some conceptions die or threaten the life of the pregnant person. Co-morbidities complicate gravidity and parity. These pictures look at the valley of the shadow of death. But it appears so normal. This is the party myth and misinformation plays in pregnancy.

Maternal mortality rates in the US are shockingly high for a developed country. It’s stomach turning how high. The minute you’re done giving birth, after massive bodily and mental trauma, doctors say they’ll see you and your baby in six weeks. I once broke my foot and the doctor wanted to see me in three days. My foot. Yet an emergency C-section or high-risk, vaginal birth gets a six week call back. Face it, the pregnant have fulfilled their obligations as a vessel. See ya later, says the medical establishment.

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Even as I write this, politicians want to put the pregnant in barbaric, mortal risk, resulting in the pregnant being fully responsible for something radically out of their control. There’s that pesky boot on our necks.

These are the most vulnerable and terrifying moments anyone can experience. Draconian, outdated paradigms play along side modern medical miracles.

So, I pack my gear and head into homes where I am welcome, seeking to make sense of how normal it looks and feels. Support partners, dogs and family sometimes factor into the fringes of the frame. The pictures seem un-risky because of the myth of joyous birth. Shame isn’t a great vibe for art. Voyeurism is where the art world is most comfortable. To that point, I rarely see transparency about how scary pregnancy is. Such is the journey of documentary-style photography, to glean answers to questions nobody has addressed.

It’s easier to like the work of almost any other photographer than to spend time with the existential questions these pictures offer. I flaunt the un-comfortability, risk and banality in equal measure. G9 P2 is the ennui and reality of the non-moments swirling around pregnancy. Even if pregnancy doesn’t seem high-risk because we’ve been brainwashed into thinking it isn’t.

Technical notes: Analog panoramic camera and 35mm TriX 400 film. Proof prints are fiber based prints approx 5.5 x14” with exhibition sizes approx 10×24”