Heji Shin

Heji Shin: My name is Heji Shin.

Narrator: Shin’s photos capture newborn babies at the moment they are born.

Heji Shin: Of course, everybody can agree that babies are something that you love and that you adore and admire. When you look at certain social platforms like Pinterest, you see something with butterflies, mostly decorated with flowers and all that.

The first birth that I attended, I saw what was happening and I was like, oh, this moment was actually interesting. This was, of course, the complete pinnacle of the whole process, the head coming out. It was like an instant revelation because I'm really into portrait photography. These babies were actually, at that moment, not even babies. They look very alienating. They look very gruesome at some point. It was also like, intentional that they looked this way because the procedure of birth is something very similar to death. It is very excluded from public life, from social life, even in general, just out of the minds of people. It has, of course, a reason because it's violent, it includes a lot of aggression but there are, of course, the most essential parts of life.

Narrator: Collaboration and consent are very important parts of Shin’s work.

Heji Shin: I found midwives who were really committed to this project because they really believed in it, because they also really believe in what they're doing. They asked these women and these women said yes, and they were very willing to meet. Then I was talking to them and I think there was not one mother, who actually, after a meeting, refused to do it.