Skin on Film
Being filmed during pregnancy, birth and in the postpartum period means showing skin. The transformation we want to witness and capture is bodily. It happens under, through and on the skin. Inside the womb, through the birth canal or an incision, on the chest while breast-/chest-/bottle-feeding.
Skin, skin, skin and its porous nature – sweating, leaking milk, bleeding. Skin.
It can feel incredibly vulnerable to have images captured during this time because the rapid transformations we are undergoing may make us feel out of control. Many times, I have heard women say they wouldn’t want to be filmed during birth for fear of how they might look.
When I was seven months pregnant, I found a lump in my armpit. Until then, the transformations had been manageable; they were slow enough for my mind to adapt to my body. My belly grew, my breasts were fuller, I had gained weight. All good, all beautiful. But this change in my armpit sent me spiralling into a vortex of fear. It triggered past health anxieties, a family history of breast cancer, a general tendency towards anxiety, perhaps now exacerbated by hormonal changes.
The fear also sent me into darkness about the meanings often attached to the (female) body. It brought up anger towards its sexualisation, fetishisation and objectification. Anger towards our culture's obsession with breasts, and how they are often misunderstood in their emotional, physical and spiritual complexity. A symbol of over-giving without receiving enough in return.
After my child was born, it turned out that the lump was simply a gland that had become palpable due to the changes my breasts underwent in preparation for lactation. All good, all beautiful. It didn't feel beautiful though. The time of not knowing felt incredibly scary and impacted how I felt and moved within my body, as well as how I anticipated my baby's arrival and the responsibility it would bring.
I felt like I was holding the possibility of life and death, of nurturing my baby and having to leave him, of a new beginning and an always-already-ingrained-in-our-bodies-mortality within my skin.
Whatever our stories, positionings in the world and ancestral entanglements may be, changes don’t have to be “dramatic” to send us spiralling. Navigating pregnancy, giving birth and being non-stop responsible postpartum within the changing landscape of our bodies – our sweating, smelly, leaking, exhausted, birthing, amazingly complex, animal bodies – means, in some big or small way, touching the possibility of loss.
Nature is not just conception, flowers and growth; it's also death.
Some of the pregnancy, birth and postpartum photography and videos prevalent in our visual culture do not represent this vulnerability. Understandably, because it can be scary.
But there is so much beauty in our real skin and the many forms it may take. So much truth about life.
Now I wish I had more images of that vulnerable time in my life.
And now I love to film skin because it feels like touching it with the eyes of consent and a deep understanding of vulnerability. Within a framework of other forms of touch, connection and co-regulation, this form of witnessing can invite an appreciation of how our bodies can stretch, nurture, heal and remember. To me this is the real beauty of image-making: capturing transformation with love.
