By Sebastian Smee
April 18, 2024
Rineke Dijkstra makes photographs and sometimes videos of people who are brave. Sometimes they’re adolescents, sometimes soldiers, sometimes bullfighters.
The brave person we see here is called Julie. She’s in The Hague, the year is 1994, and she has just done the bravest thing human beings do that’s somehow considered routine. She has given birth.
There’s a surprising silence around the raw substance of this subject, perhaps because it’s so elemental. Every one of us came into the world from a woman’s uterus, as the midwives like to point out. But that doesn’t mean that the process is safe, or routine, or uncomplicated.
Story continues below advertisement
Blood pressure rises dangerously. Umbilical cords get wrapped around necks. Babies flip into breech position, twins … (twins!!). There are a hundred things that can go wrong. Or go right, but only after tremendous, sometimes life-threatening difficulty. And of course, all this comes after months of stunning changes to the mother’s body and her entire attitude to life.
April 18, 2024
Rineke Dijkstra makes photographs and sometimes videos of people who are brave. Sometimes they’re adolescents, sometimes soldiers, sometimes bullfighters.
The brave person we see here is called Julie. She’s in The Hague, the year is 1994, and she has just done the bravest thing human beings do that’s somehow considered routine. She has given birth.
There’s a surprising silence around the raw substance of this subject, perhaps because it’s so elemental. Every one of us came into the world from a woman’s uterus, as the midwives like to point out. But that doesn’t mean that the process is safe, or routine, or uncomplicated.
Story continues below advertisement
Blood pressure rises dangerously. Umbilical cords get wrapped around necks. Babies flip into breech position, twins … (twins!!). There are a hundred things that can go wrong. Or go right, but only after tremendous, sometimes life-threatening difficulty. And of course, all this comes after months of stunning changes to the mother’s body and her entire attitude to life.
