Stunt doubles

Teenage dreams can come to a crashing halt when you feel that you don't have what it takes. Of course, you can develop talent. With 10,000 hours of practise, you can become an expert in any skill. But holding a camera in a stranger's face has always made me feel uncomfortable. I was never ballsy enough to get that magical portrait. I don't have the right personality to get people to do things for a photo. Too self-conscious, not enough bold. 

So when it came to the art direction for The Co-Creators, I toyed with getting over that hang-up and mastering my photography skills. For all of about two minutes. And the possibility of paying for a photographer from my own funds was, well, impossible. I also discovered quite early on that while some people were willing to share their story, being in front of the camera was too much. They felt too exposed. One woman said that how her son was conceived was his story, and he's too young to even know that story yet. She wanted to protect his identity. And I get that. Which led me to the image hoarding direction — combining these fertility stories with photography I love. So I'm going to be completely transparent that these images aren't the people featured in the stories, but they create a tone, texture. Something nice to look at. I had a conversation about egg and sperm donors the other day and we started referring to them as stunt doubles. So I guess these portraits are in some ways the stunt doubles for the people they represent. 

I was recently watching the "It's my vagina" scene in the Netflix show Sex Education (great scene, but it's actually VULVA), where different pupils stand up in a school assembly to claim the identity of a fanny photo that had been texted to everyone. The solidarity they show is so powerful. They literally stand up to protect the identity of one. The point is that it could have been any woman's vulva. Likewise, anyone could struggle to conceive for whatever reason. The stories I'm sharing are portraits of how we're creating families today, when making a baby the traditional way isn't working. By using stunt doubles I'm able to feature the work of amazing photographers, emerging photographers, and co-create on a content level. And it means I get to rebrand fertility struggles, so while the wait to motherhood feels shit, at least it looks good.