Amit & Evan shared with me one of their most private and precious moments—The birth of their baby boy. This project stemmed from a personal fear of childbirth. I got married in 2017, and starting a family is something we’ve always talked about, however, I wanted to explore the practical aspects of what it takes to bring life into the world. This, paired with the tragic knowledge of the abysmal maternal death rates for African-American women, makes it a potential life or death journey.
Approaching this subject from a documentary perspective allowed me to both create a safe emotional distance, while leveraging the second-hand experience that being in the room afforded me. While I typically shoot only in color, there was something about the timeless experience of childbirth that made me feel these images needed to be in black & white.
