In Eve’s Arnold’s words:

“I had lost a baby and gone deep into depression, and in my anguish had turned to photographing births as a catharsis. It seemed madness to go to the source of the pain but it did assuage my grief. For an entire winter I went back and forth to the Mather Hospital on Port Jefferson, looking for the exact five minutes when the infant leaves the warmth and security of the womb and is thrust into the alien world where

the cord is cut
the child is slapped
tagged
footprinted
weighed
washed
anointed
measured
swaddled.

The above describes the way birth was handled in the United States (under ideal clinical conditions) in the 1950s. All of this was to change, as I found out in the sixties when I did a story in Britain on motherhood. The new approach was to leave the child alone as much as possible immediately after he or she had navigated the birth canal. It was closer to what I photographed later in primitive countries like Haiti and Tibet, where the child was placed in the mother’s arms to rest even before the cord was cut. The rest of the initiation into life would come in due course.

Life magazine loved the birth story and ran the layout over eight pages, calling the closing shot which ran over two pages, “classic”. It was one of two hands, the child clinging to the mother’s hand. The picture has been used to advertise everything from insurance to cornflakes.”

Poster specifications:

Epson Ultra Premium Luster Photo Paper is between a gloss and matte finish, providing you with highly saturated look and maximum ink coverage. Because of its saturation and resistance to fingerprints, luster paper is a popular choice for giclée quality photographic prints.

• 16 x 20 inches (40 x 50cm)

• Archival quality paper

• Paper weight: 7.67 oz/y² (260 g/m²)

• Slightly glossy

• Fingerprint resistant

• Printed using Epson UltraChrome water-based HDR ink-jet technology

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