© Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez
To be Born and to Give Birth
For Press Photos
Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez. Photo: Henrik Nielsen
MAY 9 2026 - MARCH 20 2027
To be Born and to Give Birth
EMILIA BERGMARK-JIMÉNEZ
To Be Born and to Give Birth is a story about the existential aspect of giving birth. Photographer Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez has attended numerous births over several years, each one with its own unique set of circumstances and progression.
When Emilia was hired to do a commercial shoot during a birth, she realized how much giving birth two years earlier had affected her. She felt that the answers she was looking for were right there in the room where children were born. Those places, people and stories became the start of the personal project Swedish Births, which developed into To Be Born and to Give Birth.
The exhibition is a journey into the most intimate setting and most profound moment, a place where things change forever and time is reset. At the same time, it is a journey into Emilia’s inner self, a baptism in amniotic fluid and a reckoning with the fear of childbirth, her own and society’s.
© Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez
“Now I understand that there are as many stories of childbirth as there are particles in a sun storm. Every one of us can contain a multitude of narratives and experiences. Contradictory, complex, surprising.”
Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez
”The engrossing power of photography”
- Since I was twelve years old, I have believed in the engrossing power of photography. Its ability to bridge the gap between people’s emotions and experiences. It was clear to me from the beginning that this project needs to be a photo exhibit that people can enter and be engrossed in. These images need to be addressed in public, just like the subject of childbirth itself, says Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez.
© Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez
“In the moment of birth, the universe comes apart, it gets split into atoms and molecules, your heart flutters up from your chest, out through your throat like a bird you released from your grip, and the new scream that echoes through the room is not just the baby’s first breath, it is everyone’s first breath. It will never be old, it is forever new, new, new. And yes, it is brand new to me, but I know in my soul it is as old as time.”
Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
To Be Born and to Give Birth is created by the photographer Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez, curated and produced by Fotografiska, Stockholm. At the time that the exhibition opened at Fotografiska, Emilia Bergmark-Jiménez published the book of the same name.