4×6″ signed prints of my visual artwork are available for $40 each including shipping. Please email courtnee@neevita.net to order, including links to the desired image(s) you’d like to purchase prints of (specific images are subject to availability).
Birthrights is a 2013 photography project by Courtnee Papastathis which explores transition, and the uncomfortable collision of multiple factors (physical, emotional, social) that contribute to the profoundly transformative experience of birth and motherhood, particularly in America. The inspiration for the project came from Courtnee’s interactions with her own mother, hearing stories, briefly, after 22 years of no contact. It was inspired by Jim Wilkinson’s work with his Naked Truth Project, which Courtnee participated in.
In Birthrights, women from different backgrounds and timelines are interviewed about their (first) pregnancy. From that interview, a short phrase to embody their first thoughts when they awoke after giving birth was chosen.
As well, we chose a part of their body to focus on for the image, either because that part was the one which has most changed physically/visually since pregnancy, or is the part in which their relationship has changed the most since the experience of giving birth.
The images are an intentional objectification of the mother. They are abstract, dark, desaturated, and subtlety highlight the bodies ‘flaws’, speaking both to the often hidden trauma and horror many women face in motherhood (which is not represented in typical peachy/soft pregnancy photography), as well as their erasure from part of a both conscious and subconscious value system of a society infected with a superficial and unattainable beauty standard.
“Wow.. It really Happened”
“Do I love him?”
“Who am I?”
“War Torn”
“Now I know which man I am keeping in my life”
“This time, I did it RIGHT!”
