Overview

What does an image of a pregnant woman mean? Pregnant with meaning but resistant to interpretation, photos of pregnant bodies rarely appear in public. When they do, they viscerally challenge society's perception of women, sex, and reproduction. Pregnant Pictures assembles an astonishing and visually powerful collection of over 200 photos of pregnant women in the twentieth century. These varied images - from medical textbooks, childbirth manuals, and ads for maternity clothes to family snapshots, fine art photos, even Annie Leibovitz's celebrity portraits - defy any typical notion of pregnancy. Together, they make a vital contribution to feminist understandings of pregnancy as experienced by women from all walks of life.

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9780415904490

Table of Contents

Reviews

... skillfully unravels the hidden politics behind the imagery. <br>-Village Voice Literary Supplement <br> This book establishes pregnant pictures as a genre and pregnancy itself as a shape and an experience worthy of aesthetic attention. As elastic as the pregnant bodies they portray, these photos encompass and express the multiple dimensions of pregnancy and the many subtleties of the pregnant woman, from the archetypal to the idiosyncratic. A stunning collection and a fascinating analysis!. <br>-Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage <br>... presents a revolutionary body of images and analyses. What an astonishing archive Matthews and Wexler have assembled! Scholars and artists will be making reference to this book for years to come. <br>-Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon <br> In tracing pictures of pregnancy in modernist art photography, childbirth books, medical texts, advertising images and family photographs, Wexler and Matthews reveal the shifting social attitudes about pregnancy in the twentieth century. Inventing a vocabulary to discuss forms of representation that have remained as invisible in popular as in academic discourse, they have offered us a stunning collection of images, and a wonderful introduction to a new feminist photographic theory and practice. <br>-Marianne G. Hirsch, author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory <br>

... skillfully unravels the hidden politics behind the imagery. -Village Voice Literary Supplement This book establishes pregnant pictures as a genre and pregnancy itself as a shape and an experience worthy of aesthetic attention. As elastic as the pregnant bodies they portray, these photos encompass and express the multiple dimensions of pregnancy and the many subtleties of the pregnant woman, from the archetypal to the idiosyncratic. A stunning collection and a fascinating analysis!. -Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage ... presents a revolutionary body of images and analyses. What an astonishing archive Matthews and Wexler have assembled! Scholars and artists will be making reference to this book for years to come. -Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon In tracing pictures of pregnancy in modernist art photography, childbirth books, medical texts, advertising images and family photographs, Wexler and Matthews reveal the shifting social attitudes about pregnancy in the twentieth century. Inventing a vocabulary to discuss forms of representation that have remained as invisible in popular as in academic discourse, they have offered us a stunning collection of images, and a wonderful introduction to a new feminist photographic theory and practice. -Marianne G. Hirsch, author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory

This book establishes pregnant pictures as a genre and pregnancy itself as a shape and an experience worthy of aesthetic attention. As elastic as the pregnant bodies they portray, these photos encompass and express the multiple dimensions of pregnancy and the many subtleties of the pregnant woman, from the archetypal to the idiosyncratic. A stunning collection and a fascinating analysis! -- Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage ... presents a revolutionary body of images and analyses. What an astonishing archive Matthews and Wexler have assembled! Scholars and artists will be making reference to this book for years to come. -- Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon In tracing pictures of pregnancy in modernist art photography, childbirth books, medical texts, advertising images and family photographs, Wexler and Matthews reveal the shifting social attitudes about pregnancy in the twentieth century. Inventing a vocabulary to discuss forms of representation that have remained as invisible in popular as in academic discourse, they have offered us a stunning collection of images, and a wonderful introduction to a new feminist photographic theory and practice. -- Marianne G. Hirsch, author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory ...skillfully unravels the hidden politics behind the imagery. -- Village Voice Literary Supplement

Author Information

Sandra Matthews is a writer and photographer. Essays of hers have appeared in Afterimage and Exposure, and her photographs have been exhibited internationally. She is also Associate Professor of Film and Photography at Hampshire College.Laura Wexler is Associate Professor of American Studies and Women's Studies at Yale University. She is the author of the forthcoming Tender Violence:Domestic Images in an Age of U.S. Imperialism.

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