Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 5

Natalie Lennard
Born of Calamity- Staged Photograph of Wild West + Calamity Jane (Green+Rust)

2019

About the Item

"Born of Calamity" is part of international artist Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. Every image in Birth Undisturbed is available to purchase as a limited edition, numbered photographic artwork. Available in 13x19, 35x47, 47x62, 59x75 as well. Inquire for more pricing. Different sizes are printed on different archival paper; inquire for specifics. Follow our storefront at Gallery 1202 for new listings and sales. ‘Of all the half legendary characters who roamed the frontier in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and whose exploits have provoked the imagination, one of the most amazing was Calamity Jane.” — Roberta Beed Sollid. Martha Canary, better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman, professional scout, and the best-known heroine of the American Wild West. Orphan, prostitute, bullwhacker; likened to Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale, and long celebrated in novels, plays, and movies. She was also a mother, living in one of the most dangerous eras to give birth. Diseases like cholera, smallpox, and dysentery were rampant before the advent of sanitation and hygiene. Poverty, malnutrition, lack of contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, and bad birth care leading to infection and fatal puerperal fever are just some reasons it was harrowing to give birth in the 1800s Wild West. Yet, it does better justice to understand how rather than childbirth is inherently dangerous; it was made so by those mitigating factors. The overriding, touted memory of the Wild West is that childbirth was dangerous and that many mothers and babies died. What we overlook is that many mothers and babies survived. One of those mothers was Calamity Jane. Calamity drank, smoke, lived an immoral life, spent time with a host of miners with smallpox, and ultimately died young in her 50s. And yet, despite that, childbirth did not take her life nor that of her children. There is little dispute that the Wild West was a dangerous time to bear children. Rather than blindly glamorizing the fortunate women, a depiction of the Wild West’s greatest masculine heroines in the ultimate depiction of her biological femininity helps remind us of the maternal existence behind the paternal voice that has dominated the narrative of the historical American West. Birth still happened, often simply then always complicated. Mothers lived; babies lived. In the scourge of great calamity, humanity was still capable, and the generations it bore are its legacy.
  • Creator:
  • Creation Year:
    2019
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 24 in (60.96 cm)Width: 31 in (78.74 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Framing:
    Framing Options Available
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Gilroy, CA
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: NL-7-20171stDibs: LU129826312402
More From This SellerView All
  • The Whitechapel Woman- Staged Photograph of Birth Scene (Green+Blue+Red)
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    Every image in Birth Undisturbed is available to purchase as a limited edition, numbered photographic artwork. Available in 13x19, 35x47, 47x62, 59x75 as well. Inquire for more pricing and follow our storefront at Gallery 1202 for more work by Lennard. "The Whitechapel Woman" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “For the first time... I had been refused when offering chloroform... later I asked her why... shyly she turned from thw window that burst the first light of dawn and said: ‘It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?’" A chance phrase by a woman in a hovel in Whitechapel in 1911, that childbirth wasn’t meant to be painful, led the young Dr Grantly Dick-Read to explore that in the absence of fear, the body's natural endorphins can replace the stress hormones that cause pain in childbirth. He went on to write the most influential book on childbirth of the last century, 'Childbirth Without Fear' in 1942, with the passage describing the encounter becoming famously enshrined in birth philosophy. “The window was broken, rain pouring in, the bed had no proper covering… the room was lit by one candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle on the mantelshelf, my patient covered in sacks… a neighbour had brought in a jug of water and a basin”. Dick-Read’s cinematic account for the first time is here visualised, re-enacted at Dennis Severs’ House, a ‘living museum’ of Victorian London. With inspiration from the composition of painting ‘The Doctor’ (1890) by Sir Luke Fildes...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Satin Paper, Digital

  • Call to Prayer - Staged Photograph of Muslim Birth Scene (Green+Peach)
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    "Call to Prayer" is the latest photograph in the award-winning series 'Birth Undisturbed' by British photographer Natalie Lennard. The series travels through time and space to show t...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Digital

  • Ejection Reflex- Staged Photograph of Vintage Home Birth Scene with Roses
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    "Ejection Reflex" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just ope...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Satin Paper, Digital

  • Salle Sauvage- Staged Representation of the "Primitive Room" by Michael Odent
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    "Salle Sauvage" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “The bearing of children ought to become as free from danger and long debility to civilised woman as it is to the savage.”— Thomas Huxley ‘Salle Sauvage’ translates to ‘primitive room’, a term coined by renowned obstretician Michel Odent in reference to his hospital in Pithiviers, France, with rooms designed to accommodate the primal instincts of labouring women. Here, a glass Cube set within the urban landscape of London becomes a metaphor for Odent’s primitive room and a woman’s connection with nature through homebirth. It is as though the walls of a living room have become transparent admitting our spectatorship into the private space of a birthing woman, perhaps for our enlightenment as well as vicariousness. “Buscar la forma” say the women of the Yucatan in Mexico, meaning to find your style, in contrast to the Western medical model...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Satin Paper, Digital

  • Aquadural- Contemporary Photograph of Water Birth (Green+Blue+Yellow)
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    "Aquadural" is part of international artist Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. - See our storefront at Gallery 1202 for the other works in this series “The baby doesn’t co...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Digital, Satin Paper

  • The Whitechapel Woman- Framed Photograph of Birth Scene (Green+Blue+Red)
    By Natalie Lennard
    Located in Gilroy, CA
    Every image in Birth Undisturbed is available to purchase as a limited edition, numbered photographic artwork. Available in 13x19, 35x47, 47x62, 59x75 as well. Inquire for more pricing and follow our storefront at Gallery 1202 for more work by Lennard. "The Whitechapel Woman" is part of international artist, Natalie Lennard's series Birth Undisturbed. “For the first time... I had been refused when offering chloroform... later I asked her why... shyly she turned from the window that burst the first light of dawn and said: ‘It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t meant to, was it, doctor?’" A chance phrase by a woman in a hovel in Whitechapel in 1911, that childbirth wasn’t meant to be painful, led the young Dr. Grantly Dick-Read to explore that in the absence of fear, the body's natural endorphins can replace the stress hormones that cause pain in childbirth. He went on to write the most influential book on childbirth of the last century, 'Childbirth Without Fear' in 1942, with the passage describing the encounter becoming famously enshrined in birth philosophy. “The window was broken, rain pouring in, the bed had no proper covering… the room was lit by one candle stuck in the top of a beer bottle on the mantelshelf, my patient covered in sacks… a neighbor had brought in a jug of water and a basin”. Dick-Read’s cinematic account for the first time is here visualized, re-enacted at Dennis Severs’ House, a ‘living museum’ of Victorian London. With inspiration from the composition of painting ‘The Doctor’ (1890) by Sir Luke Fildes...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Satin Paper, Digital

You May Also Like
  • Blue Mosque, Mazar e Sharif by Steve McCurry, 1992, Digital C-Print
    By Steve McCurry
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Blue Mosque, Mazar e Sharif by Steve McCurry depicts a couple seated on the ground, feeding a flock of white doves. More birds swoop down from the sky, intrigued by the hand out of f...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Digital

  • Figurative photo, Signed limited edition print, Contemporary portrait - Fireman
    By Laurent Campus
    Located in Barcelona, Barcelona
    An original signed archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag® Baryta 315 gsm paper by Italian French artist Laurent Campus titled ‘ Fireman'. This photograph is part of the exh...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, Color, Giclée, Pigment, Archival Pig...

  • Epitaph II - portrait with colorful pearl makeup, fine art photography, 2013
    By Rankin
    Located in Vienna, AT
    All prints are limited edition. Available in multiple sizes. High-end framing on request. All prints are done and signed by the artist. The collector receives an additional certific...
    Category

    21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Figurative Photography

    Materials

    Lambda

  • Man and Taj Reflection by Steve McCurry, 1999, Digital C-Print
    By Steve McCurry
    Located in Dallas, TX
    Man and Taj Reflection by Steve McCurry depicts a man dressed in white, kneeling down to gather water below him. The Taj Mahal is mirrored almost perfectly in the still water. This ...
    Category

    1990s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Digital

  • Thea as a cat - model in latex mask and stockings, fine art photography, 2009
    By Guido Argentini
    Located in Vienna, AT
    All prints are limited edition. Available in multiple sizes. High-end framing on request. All prints are done and signed by the artist. The collector receives an additional certific...
    Category

    Early 2000s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Lambda

  • Double Helix, Contemporary Color Photography, Oversized Art Framed
    By Roberta Fineberg
    Located in New york, NY
    For Double Helix, 2021 Roberta Fineberg is inspired by abstract painting. The artist explores the concept of infinite possibilities. Appealing to RF’s desire to alternate between the concrete and the abstract, the artist selects a theme of the eternal feminine, a female swimmer, repeated to affect a modern mandala: A swimmer moves, floats in aqua-marine waters through a kaleidoscopic view. A single image flipped and rotated in 16 quadrants forms a collage on movement, space, time, rhythm, and color. The contemporary color photograph is 40” x 60” an archival pigment print mounted on dibond with plexi face mount. The art is signed, dated, titled on verso (back of work) by the artist. Edition of 5. 2- a/p's. Provenance: Private Collector *** Artist's Bio: As a photographer and visual artist, Roberta Fineberg (RF) focuses on the themes of serendipity, inventiveness, and development of ideas for her photography, video, installations, works on paper, and painting. Drawn to experimentation, she explores diverse mediums and subjects such as the ephemeral (butterfly series), stolen moments (documentary work), play, timelessness, the enduring, and significance of matter. In July 2022, Roberta Fineberg’s Double Helix was included in a Sotheby’s auction in New York City and exhibited in the preview show Contemporary Discoveries. Selected exhibitions include: Time Gallery New York (2022), Phyllis Harriman Gallery New York studio shows (2022; 2020), CADAF online art fair (2020), Gallery122 New York pop-up group...
    Category

    2010s Contemporary Color Photography

    Materials

    Archival Ink, Archival Paper, Digital, Archival Pigment, Digital Pigment

Recently Viewed

View All