Artist’s Statement
A Black woman’s body carried more value in the system of slavery than it does today.
From its inception, the United States has relied on Black women and their bodies to develop its economy and medical system. Out of that inherently conflicted relationship emerged forms of healing and mutual aid within Black communities. These traditions continue today as Black women’s health remains underserved before, during, and after pregnancy. My photograph series Birthing of a Nation reveals a story of radical self-care through the history of birth in America, the birth justice movement, and the Black women who continue to carry this work forward.
As we work to dismantle the racist and uniquely American systems that form the basis of generational trauma, police brutality, mental illness, drug epidemics, obesity, and financial insecurity, we must acknowledge the specific and staggering impact these systems have had and continue to have on Black women, the true Founding Mothers of this nation.
I selected these images for this issue in conversation with Dána-Ain Davis’s seminal book Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth (NYU Press, 2019), a study of medical racism and its impact on Black women and premature Black infants. In my work, I point to the invisibility of Black women in our broader culture with images showing women’s faces blurred or missing altogether. With these images, I aim to illuminate the paradox of our existence, how we are allowed to take up space, glorified in some arenas, while dismissed and abandoned in other crucial political and social realms.
Birthing of a Nation is a study of our past and our future, as well as the imagined presents we make for ourselves as Black women. They are mystical, troubling, and beautiful.
Kelly Marshall
February 13, 2023
New York City
