Calling all Photographers!
A couple of weeks ago, Maria and I were working around my dining room table when I announced that I’m now comfortable enough to start doing some ART of IF interviews via telephone and having local photographers do the accompanying portraits. “Wow! Look who’s giving up some control,” Maria responded. “Good for you!”
It’s true that I’ve been very protective of the interview and portrait process. Maria and I have discovered that the interview and photo session are a part of the therapy and opportunity for healing that ART of IF offers. It’s an opportunity to set aside a time and space to reflect on the experience of life with infertility. Not only for our ART of IF participants, but for us as well.
Elizabeth and ART of IF participant, Kati, on location at a shoot in Chicagoland.
The photography also helps us tell a particular story and it’s nice to do the interviews and portraits during the same session. Although I’ve dabbled in a variety of art forms in order to tell the story of my infertility, I am first and foremost a photographer. It’s been important to me to be the one to capture the project’s images. Maria and I will still be the ones conducting interviews and photos shoots when possible. However, in order for our oral history archive to grow and for us to further fulfill our mission of capturing the diverse voices and perspectives of infertility, it’s important that we let go of some control. We can’t be everywhere at once, after all.
Kati and her husband are living childfree after infertility and are very involved in planning their community’s Founders Day Festival. Here’s Kati on parade day.
So, we are reaching out to you, our community, to see if there are any of you who would be interested in volunteering and helping us with our mission, and maybe experiencing some healing around your own experience with infertility in the process. We’d like to have a database of photographers around the country, and world, who we can call on to do portraits for the project as needed. Additionally, we’d like to have a list of those who are skilled at photographing artwork and documenting events.
Sound appealing? If so, we’d love to receive some information about you, your work, and why you’d like to be a volunteer photographer with ART of Infertility. You can download the application here.
We look forward to working with you!
Elizabeth