The Pregnant Image: archival labor and gestures of care
Exhibition forthcoming 2026. A project by Emily Zarse, with charcoal drawings by Gloria Manzanares.
This exhibition centers on a collection of more than 500 vernacular photographs depicting pregnancy, dating from the 1940s to the early 2000s. The photographs span domestic, medical, and social settings, documenting intimate moments across the period when film photography gave way to digital imaging. Once private, these images have passed through family albums, resale markets, and archival collections, each transition altering their meaning and raising questions about ownership, circulation, and care.
The project responds to those questions through sculptural installation, curatorial inquiry, and a series of charcoal drawing activations. The drawings animate individual photographs in real time, extending the archive into live mark-making. The project treats preservation, categorization, and recontextualization as ethical acts, and asks what responsibilities attach to images that were never meant to be public.