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Article Beautiful photo series shares reality of motherhood

March 9, 2017

11 Comments

Photographer Leah DeVun, a Brooklyn-based artist, gives insight into raising children in the 21st century.

As a mum herself, Leah DeVun took her own experience in raising babies, and created a powerful photo series combating societal beliefs about natural childrearing.

Leah herself believes that community obsession with natural birth, and the stigmas attached to technologically assisted birth and childrearing, have made mothers feel like a technologically assisted or ‘non-natural’ birth means that their bodies have failed them.

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Leah suffered some health problems during pregnancy, and, as a result, needed to have an assisted birth. She described her experience as ‘the opposite’ of the ideal birth experience that her friends had described to her.

‘I gave birth in a hospital hooked up to machines under challenging circumstances that were transcendent in their own way, I suppose,’ she told A Child Grows in Brooklyn. ‘But instead of being depressed about the “failure” of my body to give birth “naturally,” I became interested in exploring how we think of pregnant and nursing bodies, and all their entanglements with what we might call the technological and artificial.’

Leah then undertook a project which was designed to alter these attitudes about these assisted births. She wanted to highlight the way that we use simple devices to help us be awesome mums, but which are never talked about.

‘It’s interesting to encounter people’s perceptions about what their bodies are supposed to do. It struck me, how much technological aid it actually takes to assist in these processes that we think of as natural,’ she told Huffington Post.

Her project, titled In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, features empowering photographs of mums, like you or me, using nipple shields and breast pumps.

To view the project in its’ entirety, please visit Leah’s website.

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Comments

  • it is good to get awareness out but i don’t think that people care too much. just go with the flow lol. people don’t want to breastfeed and these images are not going to help that issue

    Reply

  • How fantastic! This is exactly the sort of thing women need to see and celebrate.

    Reply

  • Very interesting, thank you for sharing.

    Reply

  • These photos are so different to how I felt about giving birth. Couldn’t work out what she was around her waist in the first photo.

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  • This is certainly a different type of photography and one that stimulates to think about how we perceive things

    Reply

  • I clicked through to Leah’s site and the photos are certainly thought provoking. They are not your standard photos and they are stark and raw in presentation – no photo shopping that I can see.

    Reply

  • What a fantastic showcase. Nothing about my pregnancy or birth was normal, as expected, or as I thought it should be so I appreciate that someone wants to share another version of things.

    • I appreciate the difference of the photos in this showcase and it is good to have a different version of motherhood as it gives pause for reflection.

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  • Yes the top photo does look a bit strange. It is interesting to see the breast “aids” that can be used to assist Mums.

    Reply

  • I’m sorry and feel free to criticise my comment if you wish. But I do not find these photo’s appealing at all.
    Sure all these women are beautiful …all mums are but where’s the smile? And what’s with the top photo with one ugly sock up and well one down? And the the heavens is she sitting on, seriously if I could see a hole I would have thought is was a commode chair. I have clicked on the link above and have viewed two other women and they also are wearing their smiles up side down. SORRY Can’t say I am a fan of this photographers work.

    • OOPPS sorry should read : WHAT THE HEAVENS IS SHE SITTING ON.

    Reply
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