London-based photographer Jenny Lewis launched her series One Day Young in Hackney, East London, capturing women with their babies in their home environments within 24 hours of giving birth. She was asked to extend the project in Malawi, southeast Africa by WaterAid in order to bring awareness to the difficulties faced by women during childbirth in a place where there is no clean water in health centres or people’s homes. Here, she reflects on an important, empowering, and surprisingly heartening project…
The original One Day Young project in East London was such an intimate experience, shooting other mothers within my own community, sharing the experiences which weren’t so different from my own. Extending the project to Malawi, I was interested to see if a woman would still look triumphant and empowered in the face of real adversity; however, I was also aware that being in Africa I was on the outside of someone else’s experience, looking in. I was worried the intimacy and openness that was so obvious in the original series would be impossible to capture.
One Day Young was born out of a desire to support and empower women. To show a balanced view of birth and give a positive message about the strength of women to help dilute any fears. To celebrate this transition and shine a light of respect onto motherhood. How could I walk into a culture I knew nothing about, to celebrate birth and motherhood when their experience was so different to my own, when birth – as the statistics show – puts them at such a high risk, both them and their babies.