Towards the end of Expressing your Vision I think I have finally found my voice in photography. I have taken a real interest in documentary photography so I wanted to use this as a theme throughout my assignments in this unit. I want to document things that have meaning as this brings out my best work. Initially I wanted to do a documentary on my daughter for this assignment. She has additional needs and currently waiting for an Autism assessment. I wanted to show the multiple sides of her personality.
However, I decided to document the final stage of my sister’s journey into parenthood, showing two sides of the story from being an expectant mother to an actual mother. I wanted to capture the moments leading up to the birth and then meeting the baby for the first time. Being her only birthing partner due to COVID-19, this meant a lot to her and myself.
The first side of the story; being the birth, I wanted to capture the exhaustion and pain she was enduring. This side of the story is not often thought of by people when meeting the baby. The other side of the story I explored is when the baby is finally born. I wanted to capture the love in the mother’s eyes, all the pain clearly forgotten and naturally taking the role of motherhood.
To begin with I struggled choosing the images to submit. I wanted them to really show the two sides of the story, I wanted the viewer to really feel the emotion in each photograph. I also wanted my sister to be included in the images, if only a little, again, to feel the emotions she is feeling.
Amianne Riggott OCA Blog 