The Obscured Mother by Amy Haynes
The Obscured Mother is my response to experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum during all of my pregnancies. The condition causes extreme sickness and nausea, and for me it lasted nearly the full duration of pregnancy. The first and second trimesters were the most challenging, not being able to eat or sometimes even drink water. Many expectant mothers with HG end up hospitalised. I was fortunate to avoid this through medication, but I was not well enough to work or leave the house much for long periods. I felt unseen, unheard, invisible.
This image was made when I was eight months pregnant with my third baby and enjoying a rare (and short-lived) spell of feeling energetic enough to create with my camera, albeit only at home. The end of pregnancy was in sight, and I knew from my two previous births that I would feel well again once the baby was born - that I would be able to eat without thinking, and finally be able to have a cup of tea again. Although the world felt grey to me in that moment, I also felt hope. I knew there was a new, stronger version of me waiting to emerge the other side of giving birth, that I just needed to hold on until I could break out from the half-world I felt I was living in.
The Obscured Mother is an image made on instinct, and it has come to mean so much to me - it is a testament to not only my own resilience, but that of all mothers. It is a tribute to my friends and the mothers I meet through my work, an acknowledgement of this sometimes brutal transformation that motherhood takes us all through. There is no easy path - each and every one of us faces our own challenges along the way, however our babies come to us - but I do believe it makes us stronger. The Obscured Mother has become a celebration of that, and a reminder of the strength we hold inside ourselves.
This image was selected for the final of the Eve Arnold Photography Prize as part of the Women in Art Prize 2025.
The Obscured Mother featured on billboards in central London in December 2025 as part of Art on the Street by Creative Flair, supported by Fetch Magazine and Women in Art.
Limited edition prints of The Obscured Mother are available to buy HERE
