If friendship were a drink, it would be a bunch of beer bottle, half-empty and forgotten over the stonewall on the edge of that very beach. If love were a drink, it would be a glass of red wine, poured elegantly by the uncertain hands of a lover during some special occasion that had to be celebrated just because there was the chance to. If motherhood were a drink, it would undoubtedly be milk, the very first thing that is fed to a newborn, the very first drink we all have. Breastfeeding is a journey of nurturing, where both the child and the parents grow up, though differently. Vincent Ferrané shares those intimate moments, crafting a proper diary made of images of immediate beauty, gifting people with a gent- le reminder of how powerful simple and natural needs can be.
Breastfeeding is a real «path», sometimes tortuous and hard to follow, in the life of mothers who choose it, so «the way of the milk» was a good direction to give for this series.
In my personal experience, our baby had a mixed diet early, 2/3 breastfeeding and the rest with a nursing bottle. To help breastfeeding go well, without the risk of confusion to the baby, it was me who gave him the bottle. So, proportionally speaking, I did not feel totally excluded from this intimate relationship to baby feeding. So, I started this candid series as a moved father I think, a father-photographer. For such an intimate project, the first and maybe biggest difficulty is to and the right distance from your subject. To me, photographing this moment was above all an act of communion. My position as a father finally granted me both a strong implication and a necessary distance from the photographic act.
Breastfeeding is of course not only about food, it implies all the connections between the mother and the child: bodily and sensitive connections. So, this series tackles a sensitive subject of revealed nakedness that can by the way be quickly misinterpreted.
The body, the female body, is hyper-sexualized in contemporary iconography, most of the time to sell a product or to arouse a desire for something else. So, showing a body differently involves “deconstructing” that habit. In this series, the idea is not so much to try to desexualize the body as to restore its functions, but to show the beauty and poetry inherent in these functions.
What’s your favourite drink?
Ha-ha not Milk, or as a joke, I could say only if in a White Russian!
www.vincentferranephotography.com
published by: www.libraryman.se