My Birth
Carmen Winant
Carmen Winant is a writer and visual artist born in 1983 in San Francisco. She explores representations of women through collage, mixed media and installation. In the photographic installation My Birth she collected and displayed over 2,000 images of women giving birth. The installation was shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2018.
At the same time she published a book with the same title. It interweaves photographs of the artist’s mother giving birth to her three children with found images of other, anonymous women undergoing the same bodily experience. In addition to the photographs My Birth includes an original text by Winant, exploring the experience of birth. Now there’s a new edition.
The proces of labor and childbirth shown here is widespread and essential, and yet pictures of them are not common, even in our image-saturated culture. Most people are uneasy with the topic. Perhaps not surprising. After all, it’s a very personal experience. Also the book contains very explicit pictures. Unsuitable for delicate souls (like me).
In the introduction of the book Carmen Winant is wondering why very few people asked her about her birth. So the book starts with three pages of questions people could have asked her. Then the pictures follows. Where all phases are shown in chronological order. Firts the joy of being pregnant, the physical inconveniences, the contractions leading into childbirth, cutting the navel cord and ultimately holding your child.
My Birth is a moving interplay of collected photographs and personal writings on the confounding process of labor. It isn’t easy material. Of course, there’s something beautiful and revelatory about it. But it’s also a moment of profound physical strain and sometimes agony. Giving birth is probably the most intimate and private affair in a woman’s life. The question is how images of strangers can act as a sort of surrogate for others and for their body and their experience.
My Birth
Photographer: Carmen Winant
Publisher: SPBH Editions
First published in 2018
Paperback with poster jacket, 22 x 30,5 cm. 120 pages
Shortlisted for the 2018 Paris Photo – Aperture Photobook of the Year award
Chosen by people immersed in the photobook world as one of their favorite photobooks of 2018