Wet Warm Velvet is a story of women’s strength and passion. We see them in a moment of break-through that will change their lives forever. Fear is mixed with excitement, pain – with tenderness. How much strength do you need to face the elementary force that takes control over your body? We are taught that the act of childbirth is dirty. It is time to change that. I take photographs of women in labor so that we can see them as heroines.
Wet Warm Velvet is a story of women’s strength and passion. We see them in a moment of break-through that will change their lives forever. Fear is mixed with excitement, pain – with tenderness. How much strength do you need to face the elementary force that takes control over your body?
Every minute around the globe 250 children are born. Labor is a common experience. It concerns everyone (because everyone was born) and women in particular (because many of them are, or will become, mothers). For women childbirth is one of the most important events in their lives: a break-through, a test of strength and stamina, sometimes a metaphysical journey, sometimes a trauma. And still, the subject seems to be absent from our culture. The experience that women describe as a transgression or rite of passage is rarely spoken of or reduced to a medical emergency.
We are taught that the act of childbirth is dirty. It is time to change that. I take photographs of women in labor so that we can see them as heroines.
My name is Dominika Dzikowska. I am a photographer often working in the field of community arts. I am also a mother of two boys. In 2009 I started an ongoing project about childbirth: I photograph women, I organize socio-cultural events in maternity wards, I talk with young mothers, I collect their birth stories, I search for literary texts about childbirth and in general – I aim to introduce childbirth into the cultural discourse.