Even though postpartum bodies aren't something that our society likes to talk about or showcase for public display, we've all come from the same place so it's about time we started celebrating the processes women's bodies go through to bring a new life into this world. Which is why photographer Grace Elizabeth has created a "Gold Dust" project to look into postpartum motherhood.
The idea of creating a meaningful documentary project for this Essex, U.K.-based photographer arose through her interests of all things "motherhood, feminism, art, and photography." After finishing her photography degree and having done a dissertation on "the objectification of women and the male gaze," Elizabeth wanted to take on a personal project that's close to her heart.
Through her journey of creating a concept for her project, Elizabeth began researching the Japanese art of Kintsugi, which is "the beautiful art of repairing broken ceramic pots with gold; the idea being that they become more beautiful after they had been fixed, than before they were ever broken."
Taking partial inspiration from this school of thought, Elizabeth did not wish to focus on the "repair" aspect but rather to use "gold to highlight the beauty in something — this beauty being postpartum ladies' scars and stretchmarks." To attract her first subject, she put up a model call and ended up shooting a midwife, who's a mother of two and was more than happy to embrace the shoot concept.
The images are tender and timeless, all the while normalizing what the society has far too long considered unsightly. It's more likely you'll see celebrities and other regular women endorsing the concept that one must get back in shape immediately after giving birth, whether it's through natural means or laying on surgeon's table. We rarely see the scars, the changes in your body and the skin, although that is the most natural process in the world and yet we still choose to congratulate women on getting back in shape instead of asking "are you and your baby happy and healthy?"
If you'd like to get involved in the "Gold Dust" project, get in touch with Elizabeth.
Images used with permission of Grace Elizabeth.
[Sorry, don't know why this posted twice] Absolutely correct, and I'm sad to say I feel into the trap of engaging with such narrow-minded ignorance. Thank you for bringing the conversation back to the subject.
We know nothing of these women other than the sacrifice to their body they made for their children highlighted in these photographs. That conversation should devolve into minutiae over percentages of caesarians in the US (even though the photographer is from the UK, but whatever) is sick.
'Of course scars can represent valuable, transformative, life-changing, life-affirming experiences': you see, your sentence works also if you remove beauty from the equation.
One doesn't have to see beauty in something to interpret it correctly.
Not finding beauty, by the way, does NOT equate with finding ugliness.
Not seeing the beauty in something can come from a MYRIAD REASONS, so to state coolly that it is to 'conform to stereotypical notions of etc' seems to me like a gigantic impoverishing of the complexity of aesthetics, psychology and the human mind in general.
In my eyes you have committed the same mistake as Bob, that is: a sweeping statement that creates a necessary 'us' and 'them', especially when 'us' is here so underlined with the word 'good'. Aesthetics have never fared well with morality, history can teach you this.
A comments' section may not be the best place for a big dollop of subtlety, but the second best option is certainly not to simply reduce the spectrum of philosophical/commonsensical lights to a contrasty B&W.
Yes of course. My comment is a simplification of a very complex subject, otherwise I'd be writing another MA thesis, - something I don't have time for.
As I said to Bob, I'm not interested in plumbing the details in a comments section. Instead I'm just briefly offering another viewpoint that's provocative and suitably polemic as a balance to the parochial misogyny presented elsewhere.
Disgusting
Here's the mission statement and description straight from the artist (rather than the ramblings of some fools on a forum): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkzjVUqFM3Y