Julia-Rose Van Haren

For EJ, Always

Let’s start with something universal. How about death?

As readers I imagine a few things about you: you love photography. You likely want technology to feel better as a user. You appreciate beauty and maybe see it as a reason to live. You have probably thought more than once about the relationship between photography and what Sally Mann aptly called what remains.

Last year Andy ran a feature of my beloved departed friend EJ Hassan as she fought the battle with bowel cancer that would claim her life. Around that time she asked me to photograph her family. In the shadow of potential death, the pictures were easy to make but terrible to face. Photographs lie but cameras don’t. I looked through my lens at pure, unabashed human love. While we can. Was it family photography or something else?

As a photographer, writer and curator I am inspired by this genre of photography with no name. As a broad area it covers five related subject matter like the fingers of a hand: birth, motherhood, wedding, family and death. What should we call it? The hand of god? Although these works often make their way into galleries, exhibitions and books, they are not art images firstly. They are pictures for the people in them.

I’m honored to share the following five photographers whose work masterfully falls into this fluid form. I include reflections in their own words which I find sensitive and true. This sensitivity is typical of those called to the genre-with-no-name: we are motivated by goodness. We believe it’s worth fighting for and that it is compelling to photograph. Are we fools, the living making pictures of the eventual dead for the not-yet-born? What remains from birth through death? One answer: pictures and all they contain.

For EJ, always.

Rachel Koszka

On Birth

“In the middle of the birth maelstrom, I look for The Couple.”

I’ve been practicing as a birth worker for the last decade and started incorporating film photography into my support last year. I’ve loved the challenge of exploring how the two roles interact and deeply see my role as a doula/advocate as an art form, therefore folding film work into my practice has come with ease.

I’ve been contemplating the genre-bending nature of birth photography: is it documentary, maternity, event, postpartum? The couple is often at the center, these moments of erotic pleasure/resentment/infatuation/desire/romance/pain/ecstasy/relief.

The Couple an elusive, almost imaginary thing that I’m always seeking out and trying to capture, sometimes succeeding but mostly just grasping. Glimmers and glimpses, in the middle of the birth maelstrom, I look for The Couple. When married clients ask me for advice about music during birth, I tell them to play their wedding songs.

Amy Woodward

On Motherhood

“My own turbulent journey into matrescence drives my desire to honestly portray the chaos and intensity of early parenthood and family life.”

I was born in country Victoria, and moved a whole lot – many different schools and towns. Photography came to me as a way to make sense of constant change. It has always been there. There are huge memory gaps in my childhood yet I can remember back to the very first time I pulled myself up in my cot, the first time I noticed dust dancing in the light beaming through a gap in the curtains, my frustration at not being able to coordinate myself/communicate as a baby…

I've always found that fascinating to be able to remember back to infancy and wonder if that has some impact on the way I document. I am intrigued by the fragile and fleeting nature of everyday life and the human experience. My childhood and my own turbulent journey into matrescence drive my desire to honestly portray the chaos and intensity of early parenthood and family life.

Olya Vysotskaya

On Weddings

Olya Vysotskaya

“It all mattered, it was all part of life.”

When I first began photographing weddings I approached them no differently than my personal work. I drew inspiration from literature, music, films and life experiences, and I was endlessly fascinated by the range of emotions and senses that can unfold in one single day.

Some weddings felt like a dream, others like a movie or a novel. I’ve embraced it all - the beautiful chaos, quiet contemplative moments, the melancholy, the tension, the release. It all mattered, it was all part of life.

I remember being like a child with a camera - curious, excited, fully open to the experience and just following my gut. It was a total joy.

Gathering Pearls

As weddings became my primary source of income and the volume increased, my approach turned from poetic to more practical, and I slowly allowed external pressures, influences and expectations to affect the pictures I was making. When I realized I was losing the joy, it terrified me. I longed to reconnect to how photography always made me feel. I missed the happy accidents, the revelations.

I would look back at my early wedding pictures and notice that even though they were technically imperfect, they somehow carried the spirit, the feeling, the essence. They were strange, but beautiful, and they would reveal something new every time I looked at them. Many would take me right back to the moment and I could remember the smell, the sounds, the feeling of being there. Those photographs seemed like rare pearls, becoming more valuable with time.

As my collection grew bigger, and I was focusing more and more on what I truly loved and was excited about, I strengthened the connection to my genuine voice, until eventually it became undoubtedly clear what kind of photographs I really want to make and share openly with the world.”

Didi von Boch

On Family

“The photo shoot is a pandora’s box of feelings, grief and gratitude.”

I love staging. I love creating a mood that I find attractive and beautiful and real even if it’s not. There is nothing fake about posing – it’s a remembering. Creating something is powerful. To feel. I love drama and I love moms. I love their strength and their power. There is so much more to discover in photography than just smiling.

People often ask me: how do you get your subjects to look at you? It’s instinct. But I tell them: just close your eyes and let yourself shut the fuck up. It’s not easy to sit in front of a camera, to be quiet.

Photography is not at all about the camera. It’s a tool for revival / space / deep feelings. The photo shoot is a pandora’s box of feelings, grief and gratitude.

Julia-Rose Van Haren

On Death

“It’s a witnessing that has re-wired my understanding of love, devotion and death.”

2024 will always be the year I photographed Maple, my friend's darling baby who was born sleeping. Maple’s funeral was held in the Bunya Mountains in Queensland on land owned by her father Nigel’s family. His great grandparents were the first white settlers in the area and have had the land hold for over 100 years. There are multiple members of their family buried within the 200-acre property.

On the morning of Maple’s funeral Nigel and his friends quietly gathered shovels and crow bars and walked up the mountain to the highest point. The men were digging. Nigel broke the ground first and dug until he was too exhausted to continue and then the next stepped in. The ground was so hard, so rocky. They passed the shovel and crowbar around the circle, taking turns to tear the earth until they couldn’t go on, blisters and overwhelm. The next would take the shovel. Then Nigel would step forward again, recovered enough, and keep digging, tearing at the earth.

Witness

No speaking. Just a circle of fathers sobbing. Nigel dug barefoot in the hole until he couldn’t catch his breath and then dug with his bare hands. He tore the ground open. His hands bled. They went around the circle like this for about an hour. When the hole was deep enough, Nigel knelt and crumpled, heaving with tears. The men all surrounded him in a circle and without a word put their hands on his back, silent and holding for about ten minutes as he sobbed into the soil of the soon to be grave of his baby girl. At the end they stepped back and Ash, Nige's wife and Maple's mum helped him out of the grave and held him.

It’s a witnessing that has re-wired my understanding of love, devotion and death.

About The Curator

Anastasia Pagonas is a photographer, writer and teacher living and working in the American Southwest. Her writing explores autonomy, philosophy of art, moral photography and the effect of the attention economy on creative vision. For 17 years she photographed families from the child’s point of view, producing art books and large format prints, drawing inspiration from the physical photograph as art object and personal document. On May 5th, 2022 she founded MEMORY CULT, a global subscription community for personal and exploratory photography.

Five Photographers: Birth Through Death