©2009 Jennifer Loomis Photography
Photographer's work helps society rejoice in pregnant bodies
Posted on Tue, Aug. 12, 2003
BY SHERRY STRIPLING
The Seattle Times
SEATTLE - (KRT) — Jennifer Loomis has been photographing pregnant women for so long that one of her standard lines for boosting women-on-the-brink-of-giving-birth has frayed.
"You're here because you're a pioneer," Loomis tells her subjects, who spend as many as three hours in the bedroom studio of her 1904 home in Seattle, exposing more skin than they've ever exposed for a camera — right when they are at their least svelte.
"Really, what you're seeing is a whole revolution going on," Loomis says, words clicking as fast as her Nikon, passion stoking her belief that all pregnant women are beautiful. "Society is looking at maternity with a different eye."
But lately some of her "moms" have grown quizzical at the pioneer comments. Maybe it was true a dozen years ago when New York photographer Annie Leibovitz sent Midwest stores scampering for plain brown wrappers after she put a very pregnant, very naked Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Maybe it was true when Leibovitz's studio gave Loomis her first referral soon after.
Even four years ago, Loomis had to use what she calls guerrilla marketing techniques, hanging examples of her artistic, belly-bulging photos wherever pregnant women gathered. Shouldn't they document this important time in their lives?
But there are at least nine others also photographing pregnant women in Seattle alone, according to listings on babyzone.com. Loomis has gone from four clients a month to as many as 12 a week, here and in San Francisco, especially during the annual summer baby boom. Layoffs. Terrorism. Couples seem to take solace in each other as the nation's birth rate grows to a lifetime average of 2.13 children per woman, highest than almost anytime in 30 years.
Gone are the days when women got fired for being pregnant.
Going are the days when pregnant women wore baby-doll smocks with oversized bows, giving them an oddly childlike look.
Here are the days when men stand in front of Loomis' photos at galleries and stumble over their own cognizant conflict:
"She's sexy. She's pregnant."
Men set up a third of her bookings. Many of the couples have worked hard to get pregnant after miscarriages or in vitro fertilization. They want to celebrate the accomplishment.
"I would argue that there's been a whole inward turn toward family," Loomis said before jetting off for Thailand in July for what would seem to be an impossibility for her — a 10-day silent retreat. "Honestly, my work is just snowballing."
Being looked at quizzically is nothing new for Loomis, 35.
She found out what moves her when she was a 22-year-old activist living in San Francisco, sometime around her shaved head and combat boots phase.
In taking a class to photograph nude women, she noticed all the men in the class came to life when the model wore a tight bodice with fishnet hose. But she went wild with her Nikon F3 when the model came out naked against a black backdrop, draped in a single light.
"She was gorgeous - the light, the shape, the form."
But she felt the men didn't see it.
"I thought, oh, my God, that's what's wrong! There's not enough women photographing women and seeing women as they are in this more sensual, beautiful way."
But as clear as she felt then about her art, to make it her vocation was another long journey. It included living in Japan, getting a photojournalism degree from the Missouri School of Journalism, and working in Africa and Asia.
Yet there was no question that she needed to make that journey. The message came to her in her usual billboard style in yet another class in the early 1990s when she was earning her living as an executive assistant for a parenting magazine.
Photograph the image of a word that keeps coming to you, she was instructed. For her, the word was passion.
But instead of love and flowers, she bought a bloody bovine heart from a butcher. Then she photographed herself naked with her back to the heart.
Where was her zeal? The photo showed clearly that it was cut off from what she was doing.
"I used to keep it hung because it really kept me remembering what my passion is," Loomis said, "but I don't think I'll ever forget."
If she were just photographing pregnant women, it might soon grow old. But she's not. She's listening to their stories, photographing their emotions and conveying, she hopes, the changing maternal psyche.
"It's like you've got an emotional magnifying glass," said Loomis, who tries to keep her work fresh by breaking away to do documentary projects all over the world.
The mothers-to-be have their joyful days, their teary days and their dark days when they realize that life as they know it is about to end.
"That's a very scary thing for a lot of my independent mothers," said Loomis.
One client went through five miscarriages before reaching her eighth month and getting photographed. Another spent five years with a man who left her the minute he found out she was pregnant.
All of this Loomis learns as she works and gains trust, chatting on about life and blasting the same music CDs so often she claims her assistants save their own sanity by hiding them. Each session starts with a half-hour interview to find out what the mother wants and how comfortable she'll feel.
"They're nervous," Loomis said. "They're taking their clothes off for someone they don't know, let alone when they're as big as they're going to be in their lives. Your ankles swell, and your hair changes texture. It's terrifying."
Many of the women bring their husbands to be included in additional photos. Loomis gets glimpses of unusually good relationships, which she'd someday like to find so that she can start a family.
How do you hug your wife, she asks. How do you love her?
"I have such a great job because every day I get to see positive examples of couples who love each other. My parents were divorced when I was 7, and every day I think, 'God, he's so great! Look at them together!' "
Sara Beem, formerly of Seattle but now of El Paso, travels the country with her husband, pro golfer Rich Beem. She searched the Internet for a photographer, knowing she could go to any major city to find the best.
Loomis rose to the top of her search, and Beem flew here, getting photographed as a surprise gift for her husband.
Like many mothers-to-be, she arrived determined to limit how much she'd show to Loomis' camera, but by the end felt at ease and willing to show more.
"Just her personality all in itself," Beem said. "I was extremely comfortable."
Her mother understood the quest and accompanied her to the session, but Beem had a hard time explaining to aunts why these photos were so important to her.
"I wasn't sure going into pregnancy and motherhood whether I would do this again," Beem said. "I wanted to make sure I had some kind of keepsake of how special it was."
Loomis hopes to complete a book in the next 18 months that uses her photos to show how pregnancy has changed since women went into "confinement." Meanwhile, she has a show starting Sept. 4 at Martin-Zambito Fine Art in Seattle of mothers that are almost guaranteed to start the mantra:
"She's sexy. She's pregnant."
Her journey to this place started with a 10-day silent retreat a dozen years ago. But her latest meditative search, she swears, won't send her life in a new direction.
"It won't. It won't. I love my work too much," she says. "Pregnant women are beautiful. My philosophy has always been that if you look at the photographs, you'll see it."
More information
For a look at Jennifer Loomis' work, visit www.jenniferloomis.com.
© 2003, The Seattle Times.