Not Everyone Finds the Same

Things to Be Sacred

[Pregnancy is not always beautiful]

By: Alexis Siatkowski

Growing up, I learned many life lessons watching my family as well as others around me. I was told that pregnancy was

something beautiful and miraculous, and I saw how drugs and alcohol can affect people and those they loved and who loved them

back. Recently, my life was touched by someone who experienced both of these things at one time; pregnancy and an addiction to

drugs and alcohol. Her addictions greatly affected someone she loved very dearly, her unborn child. Not everyone has to see the

miracle of pregnancy be so tarnished by drugs and smoking and alcohol, but instead are fortunate enough to see happy pregnant

women, who understand how beautiful pregnancy is and willing to sacrifice their old lives and ways for something new and life

altering with smiles on their faces.

I have come to a point in my life where I am engaged to be married, moved away from home and live with my fiancé, and am

starting a new, adult life. With all of this happening, I have been able to see children very clearly in my future. While I know that will

be a new and exciting adventure to embark upon with my soon to be husband, it is an adventure neither one of us are ready to start.

There are certain aspects of our lives that we are not ready to relinquish, and those aspects are selfish ones. Being raised as I was, I

know that if I were to become pregnant now, I would give up those aspects, but it would not be of pure joy, it would be because, in a

sense, I have to. In her essay Photography, Susan Sontag (1973) states, “Through photographs, each family constructs a portrait of

itself-a kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness” (p.4). With my life changing so much and so soon, I have realized that

so many women’s lives change in this way, when they are so unready and unwilling to say goodbye to the lives they have been living

up to that point. I wanted to capture the essence of pregnancy, the beautiful and the ugly lives women choose to lead during that

miraculous time in their lives.

The following compositions are photos I took of pregnant women I know, and of the lives they are living while they are

carrying their unborn children. Some of the pictures give off a very dark and sinister vibe as you see some of these women make

choices that harm the one they should love most of all. They should show you that not everyone finds the same things to be

beautiful and something worth leaving old habits behind for; while other women find their pregnancy to be something so wonderful

that is worth giving up everything for.

Reflection Essay 1 (500 words)

When we were first assigned this project, I had no idea what I wanted to do for my photo subjects. It was something I really

struggled with, because I knew I wanted to take this opportunity to take pictures of something really meaningful. I was at work one

night talking to a young lady who is six months pregnant now, and she made a comment about really wishing she could smoke a

cigarette, but couldn’t due to the baby. A few days later she mentioned to me that a pregnant woman came in to eat and mentioned

to her friend that she is allowed to have a glass of red wine every once in a while. I realized then that I wanted to show the side of

pregnancy that most people tend to ignore because it so bad for the baby and the mother, and it’s not something many people want

to have to “deal with”. So for my project, I asked a couple of women to allow me to take pictures of them while they are visably

pregnant doing certain activities that are phyiscally damaging to not their own bodies, but their unborn babies bodies as well.

However, I wanted to show the contrast between women who were not ready to change and give up certain aspects of their past

and women who were so readyto change everything in their lives for the children.

I decided to use my iphone camera, because I wanted something with good pixalization, but a device that could also change

the filter on the pictures easily and with plenty of filter options. I decided to use a couple of different filters depending on the

pictures I was taking at the time. For the pictures I took of the two pregnant young ladies doing terrible things to their children I

decided to use the “noir” filter setting on my iphone, because it is the darkest filter options. It really makes the photos look dark,

which really shows that what they are doing is dark in itself. In his essay, Understanding a photograph, Berger states, “A photograph

is a result of the photographers decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or object should be seen” (292). I really

wanted to use this time to make people aware that not every girl sees pregnancy as something beautiful and wothry of changing for.

I wanted people to see that pregnancy can be this ugly thing.

For the pictures I took of my friend Ashley, I wanted the pictures to be bright and colorful since she was portrayed as a happy

pregnant women who was more than excited to give up anything in her life that she may have loved but would harm her baby in any

way. With these pictures, I really wanted to showcase that pregnancy can be beautiful and amazing. Through these pictures, and

being where I am in my own life, I came to the understanding that pregnancy is what you make it, as an individual. Being pregnant

does not mean that you are no longer yourself, it just means you have a new set of choices to make.

Reflection Essay 2 (750 words)

The picture I wanted to discuss in-depth is my second picture. This picture was so important to me because I was able to

convey so much through it. In the picture you can see my six month pregnant co-worker smoking a cigarette. This was something

she did very often before she found out she was pregnant, and working in the restaurant industry, it is something that happens even

several times a shift, let alone several times a day. In taking a picture of her “smoking” I wanted to convey that she did not want to

give up her old habbits for a new life because she wasn’t ready to. So I had her come to work dressed for a shift, and we went into

the back or the restaurant where all smoke breaks are taken. In that area there are the dumpsters and trash litering the ground.

There is an old and beaten up cooler as well, and the area is enclosed by a semi-rusted gate. According to Fred Ritchin, “At the

moment, in this open-minded environment, amateur digital photographers and bloggers are often the ones who are managing to

provoke the most surprises online, as professionals are frequently constrained by the limitations of their assignments.”

I really wanted to use this area instead of taking her to her car, because the area itself conveys so much meaning. When the

general public sees pregnant women smoking, they see these women as trashy, instead of women who want a baby without giving

up who they were before they got pregnant. Smoking in general, I think is something that people see as a dirty and trashy habbit, so

I used our surroundings to further that message. That a nice and happy pregnant woman would not be found in the back of a

restaurant smoking a cigarette, they would be found in target shopping around for new baby things and smiling, full ofl ife and color.

All of the pictures I took of these pregnant girls where they were doing something they “shouldn’t bedoing while pregnant” were

taken using the “noir” filter setting on my phone. With this picture in particular, I think it really made the blacks and grays dark and

grainy, to give off a feel of danger and darkness, not just in the picture but in what is happening in the picture as well.

Something else that I did for this picture was to purposefully make it blurry. While during pregnancy there are a million lines

that should never be crossed due to the harmful affect they can have on the baby, but there are also a million lines that are blurred.

In taking this picture, I wanted to show that so many pregnant women blurr these lines on a daily basis, like smoking a cigarette. In

blurring the picture, it also speaks to the audience about who the subject is as a person; she is someone who is trying to mesh her

old life with her new life and her baby’s life, and in turn it is blurring who she is a person. The blurred composition of the photo

shows that she is not exact with who she will be when the baby is born.

For this picture, I tried to use framing to help get my point across. For my frames, I tried to use the woman and the bags

across from her in the picture. I wanted to put the focus on this womans pregnant belly and the lit cigaerette in her hands. John

Berger once wrote that what sets pictures apart from each other is if a picture has the ability to clearly explain the message they are

trying to send. With this picture, I hope that I was able to send the message that not every woman finds pregnancy to be something

that they are willing to change everything for. I know that some people will look at this photo and just think low of the woman

photographed, think they she is just trashy and horrible for what she is doing; however, it is my hope that instead they will look at

this picture and know that not every women feels the way society tells them to about pregnancy.

Works Cited

Sontag, S. (1973, October 18). Photography. The New York review of books. Retrieved from

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/oct/18/photography/?pagination=false&printpage=true

[PDF]

Berger, J. (1974). Understanding a photograph. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp.

291 – 294). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Ritchin, F. (2009). The Social Photograph. After Photography (pp.130). W.W. Norton & Company: New York, NY. [pdf]