{"id":402010,"date":"2026-04-20T17:05:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/402010\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T17:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T17:05:11","slug":"photographer-takes-images-of-women-before-and-after-giving-birth-to-show-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/402010\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer takes images of women before and after giving birth to show impact"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forgoing shots of their stomachs and instead focusing on the eyes, Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice wanted to document the impact of motherhood.<\/p>\n

The photographer created project Becoming Mother, in which she captured 33 women before and after childbirth.<\/p>\n

Usually, you\u2019d probably expect that these images would show the transformation to the body, but the Lithuanian (a mum herself) wanted to explore the women\u2019s \u2018gaze\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s somewhat similar to Marcos Alberti\u2019s The O Project<\/a> in that the images are simply headshots, showing the impact using just their faces.<\/p>\n

No matter how much we may say our friends \u2018haven\u2019t changed\u2019 since having their kids, that\u2019s not totally true. They may keep bits of that personality we knew, but in becoming a parent<\/a>, they\u2019ve changed physically, mentally and importantly in this case, emotionally.<\/p>\n

And Markeviciute-Razmislavice homed in on the eyes as the pathway to the mums\u2019 thoughts and feelings in her art.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"SheShe says most of the women ‘couldn’t help smiling’. (Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice)<\/p>\n

Speaking to My Modern Met<\/a> she explained how she wanted to \u2018highlight women\u2019s gaze\u2019 by \u2018taking away everything that would interfere with it\u2019 \u2013 such as a baby bump.<\/p>\n

While the side-by-side images of the women may seem subtle, if you look deeply, it\u2019s as though each woman\u2019s experience of becoming a mum is in her eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind every portrait,\u201d Markeviciute-Razmislavice<\/a> explains, \u201cthere is a woman\u2019s story, her unique journey, her transformation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women were photographed while pregnant with their first-born and then again within the first three months of giving birth. The shoots were \u2018very private\u2019, with very limited crew and no more than two models in the room at a time.<\/p>\n

There was a slight hiccup though, in that the lighting for the second images had \u2018different lighting\u2019 due to the studio needing to be accessible for the women to bring their babies in prams.<\/p>\n

\"SheShe wanted to focus on the eyes. (Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice)Question the photographer asked the women<\/p>\n

During the shoots, Markeviciute-Razmislavice asked just one question: \u201cWhat motherhood meant to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She explained that during the first shoot, it was \u2018all theory\u2019 but in the second, \u2018most of them couldn\u2019t help smiling\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey openly shared about the new experience they were having, which they couldn\u2019t l have imagined,\u201d the photographer recalled. \u201cWomen talked about the new challenges and this inner power they discovered, that no matter how impossible it may look at first, you just do it, sometimes even not realising it was possible at first.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe photographer captured 33 women for the project. (Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice)<\/p>\n

She explained how \u2018so many different emotions\u2019 were flowing and that she could see such a difference in the women.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was something intangible, very subtle and at the same time, deep, and evident. It is indeed rather hard for me to describe the changes the whole team witnessed,\u201d she said. \u201cSome people see them, some don\u2019t. It is vaguely possible to describe in detail the invisible behind the Becoming Mother portraits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe photographer noticed a different ‘gaze’ in the women. (Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice)What Markeviciute-Razmislavice noticed<\/p>\n

The biggest changes the photographer said she saw between the women being pregnant and giving birth were: \u201cDifferent gaze, completely different energy, maturity.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that \u2018all of these details\u2019 of what the women had experienced are \u2018hidden in the portraits\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this also translates into a very important message: there are things one cannot see with the naked eye, the simplest form can hide the complex content,\u201d the Becoming Mother creator said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBehind every portrait, there is a woman\u2019s story, her unique journey, her transformation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forgoing shots of their stomachs and instead focusing on the eyes, Vaida Markeviciute-Razmislavice wanted to document the impact…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[787,437,434,435,436,438,146,85,46,12440],"class_list":{"0":"post-402010","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-artsdesign","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-parenting"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}