For 30 years, Anne Geddes has taken iconic photos of babies and expectant mothers. Now, the beloved photographer is revisiting some of those images for her new book and is catching up with many of the babies she’s photographed over the years.
For her “Baby, Look at You Now” series on Instagram, Geddes posts stories about people whom she photographed as babies, sharing the professional photos she took of them years ago as well as recent photos of them.
Geddes told HuffPost she always joked with her family that when she turned 60, she would set out to learn what the babies she photographed were up to. Last year, the Australian photographer launched the series asking for those babies to reach out to her with updates on their lives.
“Some of them competed at the Rio Olympics. They’re going through college and getting their degrees or they’re off traveling,” she said. “And some of them are parents as well. It’s just a really nice thing and I love hearing from them.”
Geddes has also just released a book, Small World, which features photos her fans have not previously seen as well as some of her classics. She told HuffPost the book weighs just under six pounds, calling it a coincidence that its weight is similar to that of some newborn babies.
“It had a very long gestation period,” she joked, adding that it took most of last year to sort through the archives of her 30-year career.
The book, which was a joint effort between her and TASCHEN publishers, is separated into four chapters that focus on pregnancy, newborns, babies who are 6 to 7 months old and finally portraits, which Geddes shot during the earliest part of her career.
“It was really gratifying to go back and revisit a lot of these early portraits and see how they’ve stood the test of time which is what I was really trying to do when I photographed the babies all those years ago,” she told HuffPost. “I was really wanting to create a classic portrait that would be relevant in 20, 30, 40 years.”
When reflecting on which photos would make it into the book, Geddes said she knew she wanted to include the photo of a premature baby named Maneesha who was born at 28 weeks.
“I’ve had so many people come up to me over the years to tell me their stories of having premature babies and how that image gave them a sense of encouragement and hope that their little baby would survive as well,” she said.
Maneesha, now in her 20s, is a photographer who has interned for Geddes.
Geddes said she hopes her book brings happiness to readers, especially given how pervasive terror and hate have become.
“I think these days more than ever we all need to concentrate on the goodness around new life and everything that babies represent,” she said. “And to me, babies represent our eternal chance at new beginnings and anyone who has become a parent would know the feeling that as soon as you have a child, you really have this innate need to make the world a better place.”
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