Howard Schatz: With Child

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With Child

Glitterati Incorporated, $95

Howard Schatz began his professional life as a medical doctor. His stint as an intern on an obstetrics ward intimately informs his latest work. “I delivered 120 babies in two weeks,” he says. “Those two weeks are indelibly etched in my memory.” Thus began a 20-year project that culminates now in a truly remarkable book. Aesthetically gorgeous and astoundingly frank, this giant volume is not for the squeamish. Its pages are devoted to nudes of pregnant women and brand-new mothers. Bulbous bodies in full bloom are set against the tenderness of motherhood, the curves and folds of the cuddling, suckling babies providing a fascinating echo of their mothers’ flesh. Schatz even shows one complete birth sequence at the book’s end. The effect is a celebration of oft-unsung natural wonder. “I was making images of biological sculpture,” Schatz says. “These are sculptural forms made from real life.”