VENTRE

When Anne-Laure asked if I’d be up for photographing her pregnancy, I was a little scared at first. If she meant a studio shoot, that was out of the question. It’s not my craft, and it’s not the reality I’m looking for.

Yet Anne-Laure, Mathis and I already wanted the same thing, without knowing it. They were looking for what I hoped to offer. To tell the story of what that last month does to each day. The journeys, the appointments, the waiting, the preparations. The things that happen before the birth and that we don’t often see photographed this way.

Anne-Laure’s body changes shape and bears the strain. Their life together organises itself around it. Mathis carries too, in his own way. Even the most ordinary movements mean making room for this belly, supporting it, bearing it. We often adjust without even thinking about it. This belly is already making itself heard, and everything obeys it.

I had to photograph that grip as life carried on around it. What her body endures while it makes another.

“This belly,” as Anne-Laure called it. The title came from her words. It belongs to them both.