The Pregnant Image

Contents: About the Collection | About the Team | Tech

About the Collection

This project, The Pregnant Image, documents the collaboration between Emily Zarse, an artist-curator, and me as we consider the archival ethics surrounding a collection of printed photographs. The photographs, which depict pregnancy, labor, and postnatal care, were individually salvaged by Zarse from eBay and Etsy. These already vulnerable photos were purchased from sellers that used harmful tags in their descriptions of the subjects, oftentimes fetishizing the contents of the photographs. After she had acquired over six hundred objects, Zarse was unsure how to preserve these photographs without perpetuating the harm already done to them. Over the course of the semester, I built a unique metadata profile to describe the first sixty-seven objects in the collection. This digital project was created using CollectionBuilder, an open-source framework for creating digital collections that are metadata driven and powered by modern static web technology. I customized CollectionBuilder’s features so the site could host an abstracted view of the archive without reproducing these vulnerable images. Zarse and I decided to upload scanned reproductions of photographs that naturally obstructed the facial features of the subject(s), but we currently choose to keep images with identifiable subjects private. Visitors can view the first ten envelopes of the collection through the “Browse” tab. Our conversations are ongoing; the “About” drop-down menu on the site details a timeline of our collaborations, an essay about the collection, and technical information about the digital archive.

About the Team

Emily and Madison met in the Spring 2024 semester in Dr. Barbara Hillers’ “Folklore Archives in the Digital Age” course. The class culminated in students volunteering in an on-campus archive and documenting their archival practices. Madison and Emily both expressed interest in Dr. Michelle Caswell’s work on community archiving and requested to be placed to volunteer for the Bloomington Area Birth Services (BABS) archiving project. Emily had previously worked with BABS and the steward of the archive, Dr. Georg’ann Cattelona, who also served as the BABS director. The team counseled with Georg’ann throughout the remainder of the semester as they aided with the transfer, acquisition, and cataloging of the materials from Georg’ann’s home to the Kinsey Institute.

Both collaborators acknowledge that their home, place of study, and work at Indiana University Bloomington is built on Indigenous homelands and resources. We recognize and honor the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people as past, present, and future caretakers of this land.

Madison Cissell
This digital archive was created by Madison Cissell, a graduate student studying folklore and library science at Indiana University. Madison’s research interests include: digital community archiving, material culture, foodways, and life cycle rituals. She employs postcustodialism, minimal computing, and cyborg theory to her archival practices. Feel free to contact Madison at madciss@iu.edu with any comments or suggestions about the archive.

Emily Zarse
Emily is a visual artist, curator and educator. Her practice centers topics of the body, gender and reproduction, and is grounded in archival activations and community collaborations. She received her MFA in 2022 and her MA in Curatorship in 2024, both from Indiana University. Feel free to learn more about Emily’s work here.

For full details of creating your own collection site, visit CollectionBuilder Documentation!