"The Pregnant Image: archival labour and gestures of care" is a collaborative exhibition project developed by artist/curator Emily Zarse with contributions from artist Gloria Manzanarses.
The project examines pregnancy photography as a site where memory, care, representation, and archival ethics converge. Through charcoal drawing, sculptural installation, and curatorial inquiry, the project explores the social life of intimate photographs as they move between family albums, markets, archives, and exhibition space. The exhibition centers on a collection of more than 500 vernacular photographs depicting pregnancy, dating from the 1940s to the early 2000s, a period that spans the shift from film photography to digital imaging.
These snapshots document intimate, everyday moments of pregnancy, childbirth, and family life across domestic, medical, and social settings. At the same time, they raise difficult questions about circulation, ownership, and ethics. Once private photographs leave family albums and enter resale markets, collections, or archives, their meaning changes. This project treats the photographs as both personal records and historical objects, with attention to the labor that preserves, categorizes, and recontextualizes them. The exhibition invites viewers to look closely at not only what these photographs show, but also how they are kept, circulated, and reinterpreted, and what responsibilities emerge in the process.