{"id":256608,"date":"2025-10-28T12:53:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T12:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/256608\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T12:53:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T12:53:10","slug":"photographer-naima-greens-intimate-exploration-of-motherhood-blurs-fiction-and-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/256608\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographer Naima Green\u2019s intimate exploration of motherhood blurs fiction and reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n After Naima Green married her wife and fellow artist, Sable Elyse Smith, suddenly it seemed as if everyone in their orbit was curious if a baby would follow.\n <\/p>\n

\n As a teacher, Green loves children, and she has often photographed pregnant friends and new parents as a gesture for her next chapter. But she is ambivalent about having kids of her own, she explained during a phone interview. Like many people her age, she\u2019s gone back and forth on the reality of it, from what would happen to the life and artistic practice she\u2019s built in New York, to how realistic it would be to conceive. Three years ago, at age 32, a doctor told her she should have begun trying years earlier, which was somewhat unactionable advice without a time machine.\n <\/p>\n

\n Still, she felt a pull toward pregnancy she didn\u2019t quite understand: \u201cIs it about having a child that I\u2019m raising for the rest of my life, or is about this fixation on what people\u2019s bodies go through?\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Like many artists who have roleplayed different versions of their lives, Green considered turning the camera on herself. She purchased a 20-pound artificial silicone baby bump \u2014 which she soon \u201cshoved in a closet,\u201d she noted, unsure of exactly how to use it, until she met with the curator Elisabeth Sherman for coffee and began to discuss ideas around a larger body of work.\n <\/p>\n

\"<em>Gently,<\/p>\n

\"<em>I<\/p>\n

\n Over a year later, that work, curated by Sherman, is on view at the International Center of Photography in New York as an exploratory show around pregnancy and parenthood, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. Titled \u201cInstead, I spin fantasies<\/a>,\u201d the mix of self-portraits and portraits of friends and loved ones is often diaristic, with sunlit photos of happy, expectant couples; new parents with their children; and intimate third-trimester portraits interspersed with scenes of Green navigating an imagined pregnancy. In the show, Green assembles a wide swath of photos depicting different versions of family and community, and often touches on the expected social structures and pressures of parenthood.\n <\/p>\n

\"<em>It\u2019s<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhat, to me, feels very critical of this work is that I\u2019m not trying to point to the solution, or say, \u2018here is how it\u2019s done,\u2019\u201d she explained. \u201cI\u2019m trying to explore a very expansive picture across different geographies, different classes, different ideas of family, just as a way of seeing, understanding or creating different possibilities for family-making.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Green is interested in non-traditional forms of family and child raising, particularly living in a city where people often seem to follow the same formula: couples who meet and start a family in the city, then move out to suburbs and start new lives, often with limited help from family and friends. Even among her queer friends, who have likeminded, expansive ideas around community and family, the proverbial village hasn\u2019t always been there.\n <\/p>\n

\"<em>Molly,<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was talking to a new friend who has a toddler, and she was talking about how, even as a queer person, that the community aspect is not as fluid as she would have imagined it to be,\u201d Green said. \u201cThere\u2019s this idea that your nuclear family has to be able to self-sustain. But the people I\u2019ve made a life with \u2014 my friends, my partner \u2014 I would want all of those things to extend into having a child, and to really think about it as a community effort.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n She added: \u201cIt\u2019s not something that I want to do in isolation, and I think that is something that\u2019s deeply American, that it can feel very isolating. And I don\u2019t think it has to be.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"<em>Half<\/p>\n

\n Through her self-portraits, Green hints at the different expectations of motherhood. In one shoot, she poses in vibrant faux family portraits with a fictional father, played by fellow artist DonChristian. In another, she sits in a kiddie pool, a video camera obscuring her face, musing on the monetization of motherhood, and how \u201cintimate family moments become a part of a brand.\u201d In other images, she toys with the taboo: a lit joint in her fingers, or nearby cigarette butts in frame.\n <\/p>\n

\n Smith, her wife, makes occasional appearances but is a presence behind the scenes, too, setting up the shots or helping Green into the prosthetic belly. In a hotel room in Philadelphia, where Green is originally from, Smith took a high-flash portrait of Green against a wall in a rolled-up black tee-shirt, the belly\u2019s visible seams and pale coloring breaking the fourth wall. Green said that she had trouble finding a prosthetic that matched her skin tone, adding another layer to the work by questioning \u201cwho we envision as being a mother.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n As Green developed the work further, conversations with friends stayed on her mind \u2014 people who had told her that pregnancy was the only time they felt that they could stop thinking about body image and thinness; others who followed time-intensive diets and niche advice, or shirked traditional literature on motherhood completely.\n <\/p>\n

\"<em>humming<\/p>\n

\n \u201cPeople reach for the things that make them feel the most in control in a really kind of wild time,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd who am I to say that it\u2019s wrong or right for that person? But culturally, we have so many opinions on what mothers and pregnant people are supposed to do and how they\u2019re supposed to do it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Green says the series will continue to be ongoing. As she\u2019s made more connections and opened up discussions in the course of making the work, she feels \u201ca greater sense of possibility\u201d about what community and family can be. Recently, she began making early plans with a close friend who is planning to become pregnant.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI said to her, \u2018Well, I would love to be part of those very early days with you. I could come live with you for a month, or six weeks,\u2019 and be part of the process of someone raising a child, even though that child is not mine,\u201d she recalled. \u201cBut to be deeply rooted in community means that we are all responsible for you and your baby\u2019s well-being. And that felt really exciting to me, because I think that\u2019s not often the way I hear people thinking about friendship when they bring their children home.\u201d She added: \u201cI\u2019m definitely interested in a vision that invites more trusted people into the life of the child.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Naima Green married her wife and fellow artist, Sable Elyse Smith, suddenly it seemed as if everyone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-256608","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}