It's Just the Human Body

When we brought baby home from the hospital it was all I could do not to photograph my wife breastfeeding her every time it happened. First of all, nothing had ever made my wife happier than feeding our baby and I wanted to have a record for her, for me, and for baby. My father took a photograph of me being breastfed as a baby and it grossed me out for years. But looking back the image is startlingly hopeful, not to mention a fine piece of photography on Dad’s part. Mom was seated with me in her lap at an inn on the Central California coast, and Dad captured the light coming through the window onto Mom and me amazingly well. The shot showed a moment of tranquility in a less than tranquil time, and I’m glad it was taken.

Fast-forward 40 years, and whatever innocence might have existed in the mid-60s seems a bit of a distant memory when it comes to images of the human body. Nonetheless, in the first weeks of our baby’s life, I did take a shot or two of my wife feeding baby. I told her I wanted to do a whole gallery’s worth of shots of this glorious and moving process. Well, we went back and forth, but today she said she would herself like to have a record of this time. So, in the end, I will be photographing the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.