"When I first saw Heji Shin's Baby photos-closely cropped large-format portraits of crowning infants-at the 2019 Whitney Biennial in New York City, I felt a shock of recognition. Here, writ enormous, was Schneemann's "vulvic space." Gory, rumple-faced, with blood pooling in their eyes, the babies abstracted nothing. They seemed to Shin like something from The Exorcist, she told me when I reached out and asked about her initial reaction to the results of the shoot."
"Talking to Shin-who is not a parent-I realized that looking at the Baby series was probably the first time I had seen new motherhood depicted unsentimentally. To have a child is to take a risk, to make art is to risk, and here, embodied in Shin's bloody babies, was all the fragility of the human animal and its ferocity of will."
Heji Shin's Baby series presents large-format photographs of crowning infants during childbirth, offering an unsentimentalized portrayal of motherhood that shocked viewers at the 2019 Whitney Biennial. The images, captured with permission from mothers through collaboration with a midwife, depict the visceral reality of birth with graphic detail. Initial reactions ranged from horror to recognition of deeper meaning. Male viewers often interpreted the photographs as metaphors for artistic creation itself. This work represents a significant departure from traditional depictions of motherhood in art, revealing the fragility and fierce determination inherent in both childbirth and artistic practice.
#contemporary-photography #motherhood-and-childbirth #artistic-representation #body-politics #whitney-biennial
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