The Quickening
The Quickening traces the often invisible transformation of a woman entering matrescence - the transition into motherhood and the lived experience of the postpartum period. It is an interrogation of the profound biological, psychological, and social shifts that remain largely underrepresented, despite being a universal phase in many lives.
Life begins in expansion. From rolling to crawling to walking, your world reaches outwards from infancy through to adulthood. At the cusp of motherhood, everything instantaneously moves in reverse. Your world begins to shrink, to coalesce into the tight sphere of domestic life. What was once the sun is now the light in your living room. What was once the road, becomes the hallway to the bathroom. Everyone you once knew, becomes the squalling baby in your arms, suddenly unknowable, inconsolable and opaque in their needs and wants. As the external landscape of your old world shifts from mountains to lakes, the change also begins within. In increments and then suddenly faster and faster, you become internally unrecognizable. The task of navigating this new
geography is called “matrescence”.
The birthing body is a deeply politicised site that has historically been medicalised, controlled, and rendered passive within institutional frameworks that prioritise the infant over the mother. Despite the immense physical, psychological, and social transformation that occurs during childbirth and the postpartum period, there remains a striking vacuum in research dedicated to maternal recovery. This neglect reflects broader societal discomfort with female pain and bodily function leading to the absence of rigorous research into postpartum recovery and reinforcing a cultural silence that leaves many women to navigate complex and often traumatic experiences in isolation, unsupported and unseen.
The beginning of matrescence begins as a kind of black magic curiosity - movement under the skin, growing and forming at will, the hurricane of birth, the electricity of the letdown. The Quickening traverses the sudden landslide of one woman's known world and the subsequent moving through rubble, trying to make sense of what is left, devastated and in love, and ends with a slow rebuild of the new territory of becoming a mother.
The Quickening was exhibited in a solo show at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Victoria (2023) and the National Portrait Gallery (2024).
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Finalist for the Vevey Images Grand Prix for 2019
Julia Margaret Cameron Award Honorable Mention for 2019
Solo exhibition at Rencontres d'Arles 2019
Winner of the BIFA Documentary Photo Book Prize 2020
Finalist for the Lucie Foundation Photo Book Prize 2020
Tokyo International Foto Award Honorable Mention for 2020
Official Selection for the London International Creative Competition 2020
Finalist for the Perimeter x PHOTO 2021 International Photobook Prize
Winner of Belfast Photo Festival 2021
Bronze medal for the Documentary Book Prize at the Moscow International Foto Awards 2021
Px3 Paris Photo Award Honorable Mention for 2021
Australian Photobook Award Honorable Mention for 2022
Finalist for the 2022 SIPF Photobook Award