Pregnant Pictures [Paperback]

Sandra Matthews (Author), Laura Wexler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415921201 | ISBN-13: 978-0415921206 | Publication Date: July 28, 2000

In this dazzling collection of over 200 photos of pregnant women taken from art libraries, childbirth manuals, maternity ads, contemporary art, and personal albums, the authors explore the paradox between image and reality. The photos illuminate how society creates feminine roles through the institution of pregnancy-and how women resist such roles.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...skillfully unravels the hidden politics behind the imagery.
–Village Voice Literary Supplement

This book establishes pregnant pictures as a genre and pregnancy itself as a shape and an experience worthy of aesthetic attention. As elastic as the pregnant bodies they portray, these photos encompass and express the multiple dimensions of pregnancy and the many subtleties of the pregnant woman, from the archetypal to the idiosyncratic. A stunning collection and a fascinating analysis!.
–Robbie Davis-Floyd, author of Birth as an American Rite of Passage

... presents a revolutionary body of images and analyses. What an astonishing archive Matthews and Wexler have assembled! Scholars and artists will be making reference to this book for years to come.
–Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Jackie Under My Skin: Interpreting an Icon

In tracing pictures of pregnancy in modernist art photography, childbirth books, medical texts, advertising images and family photographs, Wexler and Matthews reveal the shifting social attitudes about pregnancy in the twentieth century. Inventing a vocabulary to discuss forms of representation that have remained as invisible in popular as in academic discourse, they have offered us a stunning collection of images, and a wonderful introduction to a new feminist photographic theory and practice.
–Marianne G. Hirsch, author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory

About the Author

Sandra Matthews is a writer and photographer. Essays of hers have appeared in Afterimage and Exposure, and her photographs have been exhibited internationally. She is also Associate Professor of Film and Photography at Hampshire College.Laura Wexler is Associate Professor of American Studies and Women's Studies at Yale University. She is the author of the forthcoming Tender Violence: Domestic Images in an Age of U.S. Imperialism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (July 28, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415921201
• ISBN-13: 978-0415921206
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,056,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite what you'd expect..., November 10, 2000

By 

Raymond Dobbs "art_by_tess" (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pregnant Pictures (Hardcover)

It's an okay photo reference, with a lot of pictures that provide a whole variety of moods, poses, and expressions - some clashing in theme from one page to the next... I guess the best way to describe it is chaos in a photo-literary work.

I gave it 3 stars as it was not all-in-all bad, but it was not quite as I expected, and not quite useful if you purchased it for the same reason I did (drawing study reference). However, there is enough material in this book that you could use it as such - I would just recommend you purchase the Paperback Edition, as the Library Binding one is Overkill (as I found out)...

6 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but a little........much, November 6, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Pregnant Pictures (Paperback)

The idea that images of pregnant women are missing from the mainstream media is an interesting one. Unfortunately, this book hashes this notion out in the most dense, uninteresting prose imaginable.

And the illustrations are of pregnant women in various forms of undress, in shocking positions and situations, and looking none-too-appealing.

An idea that could have been confined to an article. And could have been done with photos that were just a little less revolting.