Incompatible with Life (2020) is a photographic testimony of grief in the aftermath of a catastrophic loss. This work aims to examine grief on its own terms, not as a moment in time but rather as an ongoing process that shapes the world we live in.
On Christmas in 2007, Jane conceived her first child. In March of 2008, at her first ultrasound, she was informed the baby had anencephaly and would not survive. The doctors told her she had three days to decide, not that there was any other choice–the baby had no chance of survival regardless of how long the pregnancy lasted.
And so the procedure was scheduled for the following day. When Jane went home that night, she felt the baby move for the first time.
“I can’t measure what effect that has had on me mentally, to carry on being a human being after that. Feeling a baby move–knowing how badly I wanted to have that baby, and how happy I was to be pregnant–and knowing that within the next 24 hours to four days, that baby was going to die and that I was just going to still be a person after that.”
Documentary photography and poetry have been combined to provide a multifaceted and distilled texture of grief as experienced by my participant and collaborator, Jane H.
read more of jane's story here.
