The Images That Make Us: The Visual Story Of Pregnancy

This column will be more personal. I am currently six months pregnant, carrying my third baby as I travel the world to launch many public art projects (this baby bump has already attended COP, Davos, Le Louvre and the UN Headquarters in New York).

As soon as you become pregnant, the algorithm on social media fills up your feeds with pregnancy announcements, outfit suggestions and other mothers. In a world where we have spent the last few years burying the “Girl Boss” and “Lean In” millennial generations of women, and witnessed the rise of the “traditional wives” imagery curated for social media, I scroll with curiosity on what pregnancy shall look like. The poses, the shapes and decorum. I love visual symbolics and I love analysing it.

Each of my pregnancies had a different meaning, story and symbolics attached to it. Each name of my children bears this story, their conception, the context of the pregnancy and the feelings we felt for them as parents. I have commissioned paintings, mini films and worked with artists to capture it all; I want to offer this visual story to my kids as they are born – their first few visual pages as they then take full ownership and control of their visual storytelling as they grow older. I even go as far as a name ceremony a few weeks after the birth, inviting my closest friends and family to introduce the baby and the story behind its name. Artist Claire Luxton captured my second son Vivaldi, as a violinist was playing – I remember holding him during the ceremony and it was magical. No presents were exchanged, only stories in a visual environment dedicated to his birth.

I’m currently working with the painter Ella Bril in Amsterdam for this baby. She recently gave birth herself, and the painting she had of her pregnancy radiated deep strength, joy and an explosion of raw feelings, each captured with a deeply vivid colour scheme. Just like with artists Nancy Cadogan, Romy Becker, Rayvenn D’Clark and the creatives behind Tiny Studio, it involves a deep creative brainstorming as I try to find my visual voice in a world saturated with standardised pregnancy images. I spoke to a Ghanaian friend recently and she mentioned that name ceremonies were very important in her country, and that each story has to be unique; this is the opposite to the country where I am originally from – France – where individuality and originality is seen as selfish and desperately attracting attention. I want my children to be birthed in visual imagination, diversity and colours, a nod to the endless visual possibilities and worlds they can later explore in life.

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Like all images, we don’t have to accept the imposed depictions that limit us, we can create beyond them. While I candidly share my experience of recording my pregnancy (and love doing so), I also acknowledge the downsides of an overload of pregnancy images. There is a body of research showing that engagement with Instagram mom-fluencers is associated with an increase anxiety in a subset of women who already tend towards social comparison, and those who have low self-esteem, according to Sheffield Hallam University. Pregnancy represents a vulnerable period for body image, and poor body image has negative implications for health, as Women’s Health finds.

I hope that my experience encourages you to create rather than compare. How wonderful would it be to be exposed to a diversity of visual stories on maternity? Stories that encourage children and parents away from biases and visual standards.

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Lead image credit: Marine Tanguy by Pose Studio

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