Postpartum woman
The Research
The story told by Elenter has many layers, encompassing multiple issues of our history and contemporaneity. Her photographic work stands in contrast to the invisibility of women and their subordination in the past, within the health system, and in their historical role as childbearers and as those responsible for the evolution of humankind. A role that has been reduced to a merely biological and productive condition, excluding the identity and lived experience of each woman.
Giving birth is both an individual and collective act, an experience that transcends us as unique individuals, connecting us intensely with every woman who has ever given birth across the world and throughout time. It is an expansive, overwhelming journey that has nothing to do with the reductionist character of the technological and digital age. It is a practice that connects us to the mystery of the creation of the universe, to the Big Bang itself, placing us on equal ground with all creatures on the planet.
The artist acknowledges the innate and subversive power of women in childbirth and makes us accomplices in her abstraction. She invites us to rebuild our gaze and revisit it, free from the influence of others. Under Elenter’s vision, the delivery room becomes a political space—like the body itself—and part of the collective struggle of feminism.
Catalina Bunge, Curator
📖 Puérpera (English)
- Author: Deborah Elenter
- Collaboration: Jessica Stebniki (POSTA?)
- Publisher / Institution: Centro de Fotografía de Montevideo
- Place of publication: Montevideo, Uruguay
- Year of publication: 2025
- ISBN: 978-9915-9700-8-0
- Format: Institutional publication (not a commercial publisher)
- Website: proyectopuerpera.com
- Related video: Watch via TinyURL
📚 Puérpera is a visual and documentary project that explores the experience of motherhood and the postpartum period from an intimate, social, and aesthetic perspective. Through images and testimonies, the book opens a space for reflection on the physical, emotional, and cultural transformations that women undergo during the puerperal stage.
