MATERNITY PORTRAITS: MIRIANA

A friend of twenty years contacted me to ask whether I would be interested in photographing her pregnancy. Miriana and I met during my earlier figurative drawing and photography days, when she was a college student doing some art modeling on the side. We worked well together, and for several years we continued making figurative drawings and photographs. After college, she expanded her creative pursuits to include fashion modeling and some film acting.

Because she has a wealth of creative contacts who could photograph her well, and highly refined creative talents of her own, it was an honor to be asked to capture this most important event in her life. Thankfully, it also coincided with my ongoing interest in studying portraiture.

From her 19th through her 36th week, we had five sessions, spaced about a month apart. We captured everything we were looking for and stopped a few weeks before her due date, which was fortunate: a loud, happy baby boy arrived a couple of weeks early!

I put together a book, a catalogue of sorts, with a selection of images from each session for her and her husband to choose from. Working through the images, I realized some could be cropped to remove any sense of her pregnancy, leaving portraits of this beautiful woman. They are maternity portraits, pictures of and about her, without any hint of maternity except what we might see in her face and eyes.

During one session, we purposely ignored "the belly," and she confided that the changes to her body had made her feel she'd lost a bit of her "former self." Having the camera turned toward her rather than her pregnancy made her think differently about it all, and I think she came to realize she is still the same person, just richer for it.