The Labor That Sustains Life
In dialogue with photographic artist, mother & former IVF scientist Chrystal de Louise
In this conversation Chrystal de Louise joins MEMORY CULT founder Anastasia Pagonas to speak on the quiet labor of mothering, her book in progress, the intimacy of her creative process and the way photography can witness what culture has long rendered invisible.
What was the spiritual or religious background of your childhood?
There really wasn't one. Not formally. Historically the family is Christian, but there was no ritual around life or ceremony in my childhood. So from a young age I engaged with the natural world instead — camping, the trees, the rocks, the colors. That's where I found the sacred. Photography became a way to capture that beauty — the resident beauty no one else seemed to see.
Do you think your work helps you make sense of your life or does your life become the work?
I don't think it's one or the other. Art is living. And living is the art.
How did your background as an IVF scientist impact the way you mother and the art you create now?
For a long time, I saw it as wasteful. As a scientist I felt like a clinician. But after advocating for my daughter's health issues I realized how vital that knowledge was. It gave me the ability to research, to question, to fight for her. Now I see it as something I can offer others: to teach, empower and increase health literacy. And in some ways I see echoes of that microscopic world in my images — embryonic shapes, soft forms, the quiet miracle of becoming.
You're working on a book about motherhood. What does it offer the canon of works on Motherhood?
It is an entry on the tradition of the Mother Gaze: the unseen work of domesticity and labor. I hope that it will offer mothers visibility, agency, care and solidarity. It blends cultural critique, science-backed literature and poetic witness. It’s a guide forward and a gift to our children, too.
When viewing your images in this body of work, how do they speak to you? What do they say back?
They say: I see you. I've got you. They offer restoration. I’m building a visual language, a reclamation of the maternal gaze, a commitment to the unseen labor that sustains life. Not the loss of self, but the return.
I view children as more than just someone to raise, but as a mirror, a guide, a co-architect. Birthing my daughter brought me back into myself. Beneath the conditioning, beneath the roles, beneath the forgetting, a truer identity was unearthed.”
Photographic artist and mother Chrystal de Louise lives on Bundjalung Country in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales. Her work explores motherhood as a lived philosophy — through photography, craft, feminist thought and embodied care.