A Photographer’s Vision of Being a Mother and an Artist, Year After Year | The New Yorker

In a 2001 series called “I Sign; I Exist,” the Taiwanese photographer Annie Wang took pictures of her pregnant belly as she signed and dated it, the way an artist autographs a canvas. The experience of pregnancy, she wrote, in a statement about the series, presented a paradox: her body was performing a great feat of creation, but, in doing so, it was beginning to overshadow the creative identity she’d earned through her work as an artist. In the eyes of the world, pregnancy and motherhood can turn a woman into a mere vessel, subsumed by the sacrifices she makes for her children. In these photos, Wang asserts her active role in the making of another life, reframing motherhood as a grand creative endeavor.