«Nous étions là pour votre premier cri. Entendez le nôtre.» by Adèle Fontaine (ÉSAD Amiens)

We were there for your first cry. Hear ours.

Adèle Fontaine’s thesis for her DNSEP Diploma at ÉSAD Amiens in France. With a feminist focus, she researched and wrote about what it socially and politically represent to be a midwife in France. Here is a short text she wrote to present her work:

At the root of this memoir is an essential figure in my life, my own mother; but above all, there’s her profession, little known yet essential to life. She is a midwife. It all began with a collection of images. We had to dig out the archives: open the drawers of over forty years’ work, unearth the pink smock that had been sleeping in a cupboard, find the photo album in the attic. In this heap of memories, there was this snapshot of her at the age of six, a plastic stethoscope around her neck and a baby in her arms. The question then arose: where did this vocation come from?

This memoir brings together several generations of women around the theme of the body. From the first drop of blood to the screams of childbirth, women endure a reluctant hold on their bodies. As for the midwife, she navigates between these experiences. She comes up against a medical world deaf to her demands. A feminist figure, attached to the medical world, she is at the heart of the struggles of our time. The sphere of intimacy meets that of militancy. A complex question emerges: how can women’s bodies in the medical system become a political and feminist issue?

208 pages, 13,7×19,6 cm. See more on Adele’s website and her Instagram.