Extreme Pain, but also Extreme Joy
Casting an unflinching eye onto the realities of giving birth during the pandemic, LA-based photographer Maggie Shannon’s award-winning project is an important document of an often-unseen yet universal experience. Through her candid photographs, she captures the highs and lows of childbirth.
“It started with a conversation in early March 2020 with my friend Paige Schwimer, who’s a doula in Los Angeles. We were talking about how the Covid-19 pandemic could adversely affect women. She mentioned hearing that there could be a rise in home births due to mothers wanting to avoid the hospital and with partners being banned from the delivery room. My curiosity was piqued so I started calling midwives across the country to see if and how their practice had shifted. The midwives were overwhelmed by requests from new clients desperate to give birth outside of a hospital and I found their story so important. What does it look like to give birth in a time of such chaos and shifting medical protocol? Four midwives in Los Angeles invited me to follow them as they did home visits, and also introduced me to women that would be open for me to come and photograph their birth.”
34-year-old Los Angeles-based photographer Maggie Shannon is telling the story behind her recently released project Extreme Pain, but Also Extreme Joy—a searing black and white document of midwifery in modern America that she began after California went into lockdown, following the outbreak of the virus.
The images in Extreme Pain, but Also Extreme Joy capture the throes of both the physical pains and the emotional endurance involved in labor in visceral ways. Moving between scenes of clenched teeth and gripping hands, as well as forehead kisses and embraces between lovers, it’s a full and felt observation of the process seen by a sensitive eye. And in repeatedly foregrounding moments of connection as she does, Shannon reveals what the project is really about at its heart: the importance of the relationships made between expectant mothers and the people who help to bring their children into the world. “I was looking for moments of intimacy, touch and care,” she says. “A midwife told me recently that the most important tool in her kit is her hands; she can tell so much about a woman’s pregnancy just through touch. I loved this concept, especially in a time where touch and closeness could mean exposure to the virus.”
Shannon wanted it to be an unflinching representation of the process, at least in part, she says, because of the lack of “truthful documentation” of childbirth there is elsewhere. “I grew up watching TV shows where the mother is wheeled away huffing and puffing, and then 5 minutes later you see her holding a clean infant,” she explains. “To me, this disrespects and downplays the extraordinary strength of women. As a documentary photographer, I wanted to show the truth of labor and celebrate these women, in moments of both strength and exhaustion. It’s so universal, and I hope these sorts of images become the norm.”
Shannon is now looking to continue the project, and she recently travelled to Michigan for a week to do so. In time, she hopes to work with midwives across the country. After her time shooting so far, and the many hours she’s spent shadowing the midwives she’s met along the way, Shannon has seen first hand how complicated the pressures faced by both midwives and pregnant women can truly be. “I still have so much to learn about it all, but that’s also part of the fun of this story—learning more about my own body and pregnancy,” she says warmly. “I think that that is something we could be better about—education. There is still a lot of stigma attached to working with a midwife as well. I’ve had male colleagues say things like, ‘Well, I hope you would never do that!’ which is just awful. It’s a woman’s choice to make and women should know all of their options for giving birth.” Ultimately, she hopes that her photographs, tender and emphatic in their message, will go some way towards that journey.
Note: These words and images originally appeared in Lens Culture magazine here. All images are by Maggie Shannon.
10.04.2022
