There’s a low groan, followed by the clicking of a camera.
A midwife speaks with urgent intensity as she hovers over a swollen belly buoyant in a spa birth in a hospital birthing suite.
“Push right into your bottom, beautiful, all right, are you going to grab your baby?” she says as a head emerges into the reddening water.
With a muffled splash baby Phoenix arrives, accompanied by the flash of a photographer’s camera.
Phoenix is lifted into his mother’s embrace; his pulsing umbilical cord now draped across the stomach from which he’s just emerged. Each moment artfully captured by the photographer’s lens.
From private to public
The agony and ecstasy of bringing a child into the world is widely regarded as one of the most special events in many people’s lives.
In many societies it’s an act shrouded in mystery and privacy - so intimate its details are often taboo.
Increasingly this most natural of acts is finding its way into the public realm, from reality television, to people recording births on smartphones and posting on social media.
Recently birth photography has become established as a profession – and it’s polarising opinions, even capturing headlines around censorship.
Indah Sanny’s decision to have professional photographer Victoria Berekmeri chronicle her pregnancy and birth journey is part of a growing wave of demand for birth photography.
Ms Berekmeri said it entails much more than just photographing the moment of emergence.
“Capturing that baby’s first breath and all those elements of just after birth are extremely important for the genre. But for me personally I aim to get that shot of the mother that just shows you exactly how amazing she is and how powerful her body and her mind can be when they come together.”
She began photographing births five years ago after hearing comments from parents who said they’d never forget, but later acknowledged that memories can fade.
“Our culture seems to gauge big experiences in life by the physical impact that it has and the emotional story that is really what’s important gets lost. And the thing about photography is it’s really good at summing up a situation or a journey in a really beautiful way. It just tells it as it is.”
Demand for birth photography on the rise
Birth photography is increasingly popular in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, in other places like the Middle East, Japan and Scotland it’s barely heard of.
Ms Berekmeri is in demand as a birth photography teacher internationally, and hopes that developing a strong pool of professionals will ensure that genre’s reputation is sound.
“I think sharing knowledge, and raising the bar, and making sure that if you’re going to do something let’s do it right, let’s do it respectful and follow the etiquette; we will all prosper far more than one person just going it alone. And all it takes is one person to stuff it up for the rest of us."
It’s not a job for everyone. Births can be unpredictable, and sometimes she has to drop everything at a moment’s notice for a shoot that may take 20 hours.
"I aim to get that shot of the mother that just shows you exactly how amazing she is and how powerful her body and her mind can be when they come together."
Her husband Ben Daniels said his instinctive reaction to Victoria’s decision to establish a birth photography business was “are you serious?”, but he is now hugely supportive.
“It can be challenging at various times – you can’t plan for a birth, it will happen at any particular time, middle of the night, middle of the day so yes I am on call as much as she is, to look after our son.”
The process often involves photographs during pregnancy, as well as a week or two after the birth, to create a visual journey of this new life.
The growing trend has presented safety and logistics challenges to facilities like Adelaide’s Women’s and Children’s Hospital, as more parents request the service.
Ms Berekmeri said initial resistance by some hospitals against the presence of a photographer is diminishing as they receive more requests from parents, and she’s been working to develop a hospital photography framework to formalise the process.
Whilst hospitals are now coming on board, Ms Berekmeri says some people find the very notion of photographic a birth confronting.
"Why would anyone want that? Why would you want to photograph that? And you do get some puzzled looks, but that’s okay," said Ms Berekmeri.
“It’s a big deal to give birth, so why wouldn’t you want to photograph it?”
Too graphic?
New mother Indah Sanny took her own camera to the birth of her first child, but was disappointed with the results.
“An ordinary person taking photos probably doesn’t have the ability to capture a moment like that, let alone knowing how to use a camera properly, so after that I thought well next time I’m going to do something about it.”
She saw Victoria Berekmeri’s work on Facebook and engaged her to capture her second pregnancy journey, even though some families and friends questioned it.
“Some of it can be a bit graphic. But then you’ve got the pre-birth and the after-birth. It’s capturing those happy moments and intense moments and it’s not all graphic.”
Ms Berekmeri said many of her clients say they feel empowered and proud, the photographs giving them a new perspective of what they’ve just achieved.
She said others regard the public airing of the birth experience as a taboo, a reluctance that’s not confined to any particular cultural or religious group.
“It’s about desexualising the whole experience. It’s about bringing it back to family values. There is so much value on a broader level, for our culture, if birth photography can be a little more mainstream. There is so much value in being able to share a woman’s story with honesty and in a really tasteful way.”
Censorship
Though Ms Berekmeri has been awarded Australian Documentary Photographer of the Year and Australian Birth Photographer of the Year, her work is not without controversy.
An exhibition that showcased her winning portrait of a newborn still attached to her mother by the umbilical cord was censored by the venue for being overly graphic.
It made national headlines and Ms Berekmeri said suddenly people were talking.
“That was sensational. Because what that did was it opened up the dialogue to society about is it okay. What do you think about this image – is it too much? Why would people want this?”
The incredible image of Kirsty Williams giving birth to her daughter Brea polarised people. Some were passionately for a picture they regarded as honest and natural. Others were adamantly opposed to something they regarded as confronting and graphic.
Mr Berekmeri said it was a coming-of-age for the birth photography genre.
“It gave all those people who hadn’t made up their mind and opportunity to do that. And that was social change. And it was really disheartening when it was taken down from Facebook [because] so was the conversation.
"This whole social conversation – hundreds and hundreds of comments in these feeds were taken down which was sad."
Mother Kirsty Williams said she expected the powerful image would create a stir, but didn’t realise just how intense it would be.
“It didn’t bother me if my face was out there; they were powerful. I didn’t know exactly what they would do for Victoria and birth photography, but I certainly knew they would make a stir," said Ms Williams.
"I had someone compare my photograph to taking a trip to the toilet - and they should take a photo of that and call it 'art'. There was a lot of negativity: that it should not be public, that it was an intimate moment between the baby and the mother and the partner.
“But [there was] so much more positivity from it, saying it was beautiful.”
"Whether it ends tragically or if it’s a miracle, it’s still important to capture the elements that you can and I do with respect. So I shoot a lot of stillborns or children in intensive care that aren’t looking like they’re going to make it."
However Ms Williams says there was a deeper, more important factor that has made her such a strong advocate for birth photography.
“I love my photographs. It’s not been a public thing, but my daughter has a heart condition, so those photographs that Victoria took for me..." Choking back tears she struggle to continue.
“My daughter was taken away from me immediately. I saw her for I saw her for about 30 seconds and she was gone for about 12 hours,” she sobbed.
“Victoria came back to my room after I had had major complications, with the photographs on her camera and the first thing she did when she came into the room was she flicked on her camera and she showed me my daughter,” Ms Williams explained through a flood of tears.
Her daughter Brea is now two years old, and while she will need several more operations on her damaged heart, she’s a happy vibrant child.
A powerful emotional support
Ms Berekmeri said not every birth she photographs is conventional.
“I photograph Caesarians as well, with particular obstetricians that will allow it, and you know what? It really doesn’t matter how a baby comes into the world, it is still the most amazing celebration that you’ll have as a parent.”
There are also situation where the baby doesn’t survive, or is stillborn.
Ms Berekmeri says in such cases, photographs can be a powerful emotional support for parents.
“Whether it ends tragically or if it’s a miracle, it’s still important to capture the elements that you can and I do with respect. So I shoot a lot of stillborns or children in intensive care that aren’t looking like they’re going to make it.
"Generally the value in that is really high for parents because they have something to hold onto. The minute you find out you’re pregnant you start building this entire world around this child, it’s huge.
"So to walk away without anything to show for it when you leave that hospital except an empty nursery and an empty heart – I think having photographs is highly valuable.”
It’s a value she’s trying to encourage across her fledgling industry.
For all the challenges, Victoria Berekmeri thinks the end result makes it all worthwhile.
“A lot of women will actually send me their birth story, they’ll type it up in a word document and send it to me and I’ll put it with the pictures.
"And they will have this beautiful, big book that they can pass on 30 years down the track when their daughter comes home and says, 'mum, I’m pregnant'. And there’s tears and mum hands over this book and says, 'here you go. This is your story.' That’s what it’s about.”
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