2014.05.06 Cosmopolitan -
Meet the Woman Behind the Real, Beautiful Pregnancy Photographs
Jade Beall is a Tucson-based photographer who created the stunning series called "A Body Beautiful." After shooting hundreds of women who volunteered to be photographed, Beall raised more than $58,000 on Kickstarter to fund a book of her images.
Cosmopolitan.com excerpted photos from the book, "The
Bodies of Mothers," (coming on Mother's Day, May 11) earlier this week, and, after a resoundingly positive response from our readers, I called Beall to get the story behind her pictures.
You call yourself a therapeutic photographer. What does that mean?
I'm hoping to go beyond the photograph. I want to start a relationship with women that trends toward self-love. I want someone to look at a photograph of themself that has not been Photoshopped and really love it instead of recoiling or saying, "I don't like that," or, "Retouch that." That said, my photography is not a magic potion. They don't leave my studio loving themselves. It's the beginning of a process of feeling more worthy of doing great things. A lot of us, when we're very young, agree to believe that we need to be something else to be successful and loved.
Why did you choose to do a whole book on pregnancy and post-pregnancy bodies?
It's mostly post-pregnancy, the post-birth body. The only story we see is the bounce-back; the mother who went to the gym every day and lost all the weight. But then there's the rest of us. It's not that one is bad and one is good. There's nothing wrong with being able to bounce back; it's powerful and beautiful. But my experience when I gave birth was very different. When you're suffering from sleep deprivation and your body is massively reshaped and there's nothing out there saying, "You're cool," it feels awful. I want those women to know they haven't failed.
I know you asked for volunteers to be photographed for your "A Body Beautiful" project. How many people volunteered?
All of them. Close to 200. And about 86 made it into the book. I didn't get to put every photograph in there.
You show such a diverse group of women. Did you go out of your way to select women with different family structures, shapes, colors?
In the beginning, mostly younger white women were reaching out to me, so I did seek out women of color and older women. I'd been getting a lot of comments like, "I love your photography, but … I only see white women," or "I only see young people, and I was an older mother." I wanted everyone to feel included.
You include the women's stories with their photographs in the book. Which story was the most powerful to you?
Having their stories was really important. It's easy to be mean to someone you don't know, but all of us have a story and that's what can get us past the bullshit of judgement.
But I think the most powerful story for me was Alina's. She was about my age, 34, and she had terminal cancer. She was photographed with her mother, and she wanted to do the shoot because she just really wanted to celebrate her body now. She wanted to look at the photos and be like, "Damn!" Even though the book isn't out until Mother's Day, she picked up her copy from me on Saturday. She passed away yesterday.
Wow, that is ... wow.
I'm so happy she got to see it. I think that was the best part of the project so far for me.
What was the biggest challenge in shooting these women?
I think finding such diversity and representing such a broad range of women. Also the babies. I love having the babies out of their diapers, but I shoot on paper, and it quickly just became chaos.
The women aren't professional models, but look so natural and relaxed. How do you get them to be so confident in the nude?
For one thing, I don't share anything with the world until you say yes. There are only a handful of women who went into it like, "Let's do this!" I don't have as much time to sit down and talk anymore, but at the beginning we would spend hours just talking before the shoot even started. She'd feed her baby, the baby would nap. And if they don't feel totally comfortable but want to get their story out there, that fear and vulnerability can be really beautiful too.
Why do you think women are so often uncomfortable in their own bodies?
It's our stories. The belief that we've been taught. Since we're 10 years old, we're taught to believe, via ads, the things we see, that we are not good enough. I can't stand, "She's beautiful on the inside." I cant stand it. If you're beautiful on the inside, you can't not be beautiful on the outside as well. I had bad acne when I was a teenager and I kept hating the women on billboards because they were beautiful and I was labeled as gross. But as I got older I went to therapy and found more balance in my life. I'm finally feeling worthy of being successful, and that only happened through this community I built while photographing these women. I stay in touch with a lot of them.
Have you gotten any negative feedback from the photos?
People ask me, "Aren't you just objectifying women by shooting them nude, just like mainstream media?" I get that. But I want to show women's real skin and their real vulnerabilities. We are human beings.
What's next for the "A Body Beautiful" project?
I would love to do a series of mothers from all over the world. I thought this was a more Western problem, that women are bombarded with unrealistic images and are always tearing each other down. But I've gotten emails from people in India and Brazil and Europe and Australia saying this is a problem for them too. I just got invited to Hong Kong by a mom blogger there to come and photograph Asian maternal culture. My goal is to empower women.
