The Gate-Keepers: A Portraiture Project
This is a portraiture project, documenting the “gatekeepers” of a growing movement regarding positive birth experiences in our country. My aim: to promote those who are enabling women to identify with their power and femininity and therefore normalize birth and the body.
These are their stories / anecdotes / opinions about what they do and how they see it…accompanied by my portraits and some general information on each sitter.
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Nomvula is a doula and midwife-in-training at Busfare Babies in the Peddie District, Eastern Cape, South Africa. She’s been working with birthing for 5 years.
“What inspires me about my job is the way we do things here at Busfare Babies: I’m also so interested in helping others, supporting one another, especially as a midwife, here in the Eastern Cape. I enjoy being there to support a women in that hard process when she is scared and in pain, but we are there, watching and waiting respectfully, to make sure she is safe and to catch her innocent baby.”
“My experience is that as midwife you have to be someone whose got a passion for what you’re doing. Love and care is the best thing you can give a woman in birth, you have to be someone whose got a vision of a motherhood…”
• (I invite more participants to join the project, you are welcome to email me for more information).