Book Review: It’s Been Pouring: The Dark Secret of the First Year of Motherhood by Rachel Papo

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Book Review: It’s Been Pouring: The Dark Secret of the First Year of Motherhood by Rachel Papo

December 1st, 2022 by Cary Benbow

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

Rachel Papo’s book, It’s Been Pouring, is brave. Her words and images explore postpartum depression and expose the often dark and widely misunderstood period of time many mothers inhabit – a period of time fraught with contradictions. “You should be so happy!” (they say), but exhaustion wracks your body and mind. Papo’s experience and this book are her sympathetic, yet unwavering lens through which she shares inner dialog and the profound struggle – The struggle a mother faces when her internal experience does not match society’s expectations of her as a joyful mother bonded to her newborn. Papo’s images and words help craft the context that reflects upon the experience she had with both her children and those feelings. In one of her powerful images, she conveys emotions and aspects of how a new mother might feel about herself or her situation. A fogged mirror reflects a misty, mysterious figure, and a thin sliver of un-fogged surface reveals an eye which confronts the viewer (confronts herself) in this self portrait. The stare, the glare, the way she contemplates the scene of herself begs the question: What? What do I do now? What are you looking at? What will the day bring? What?

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

Papo walks the reader/viewer through her world, her experiences with postpartum depression. Her guilt. Her confessions. It’s Been Pouring is a beautiful photo book. It is an alluring and heartbreaking project. The book design and binding choices are inspired. The images and ephemera presented within are beautifully printed. When I removed the protective plastic cover to reveal the book’s outer white linen cloth, my first thought was, “Oh, this is going to get messed up really quick”.

Oh the irony.

The expectations and ideals one has as a new parent can get quickly fouled up. I remember the frustration and the utter helplessness of caring for infants. I remember feeling like my daughters were selfishly keeping me from rest and sleep. Both of them had colic as infants. They cried for hours and hours. Is this colic, or is this Hell?

And the guilt. The guilt. What kind of father would actually plead with their child to just stop, stop, stop crying, please stop crying! My oldest child, the newborn who stopped breathing due to seizures from a traumatic brain hemorrhage… was only 23 hours old and she stopped breathing, was rushed to neonatal intensive care and stayed there for a week. Lucky to be alive, and now I’m frustrated, exhausted and pleading with her because she can’t get to sleep at 4 months old. I’m a monster.

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

Within It’s Been Pouring, we see scenes from Papo’s days and nights while she was experiencing life after her second child was born. The progressing views of apartment interiors, nightscapes, landscapes and vignettes of life are interspersed with written confessions of depression, doubt, hope, and more conflicting thoughts and feelings. We see birds take wing across a cloudy sky, and bright ginkgo leaves which pop in contrast to the wet, dark ground where they fall. A passage of her confessional text muses the question: what if the baby stroller was pushed into the path of a train at the station? We see a bright sunny exterior of an apartment building with an open window – a mother and her infant are peacefully looking down at the viewer. And Papo includes an image of a photo of what looks like a sleeping child; its disembodied head from the portrait framed in what looks like a table spoon with the handle broken off.

Hidden inside some of the beautiful Japanese binding style pages, the viewer/reader must carefully part the pages to reveal ‘hidden/concealed’ images and text – a wonderfully designed and clever metaphor for Papo’s subject matter. Parenting contains multitudes – and the inner pages could be metaphors for inner dialog, and conflicting thoughts and struggles. In addition to Papo herself, portraits of shadowy figures, adults (as well as children) reflected in mirrors, windows, even puddles on the sidewalk and streets. Whether direct or indirect, these glimpses reveal a cast of characters in her morose play.

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

Book binding design detail – ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

From ‘It’s Been Pouring’ © Rachel Papo

This is a world where many things are not what they seem, and perhaps shadows and reflections are the only way to view the reality that one faces each day. The sun rises, but it brings no comfort. Just making it through the day could seem like something akin to a Greek odyssey. Ten years of wandering… an impossible list of tasks. Or, while I’m conjuring ancient literature, the process of overcoming depression could be like trying to kill Medusa. One direct view of her will turn you to stone. Literally Dead. Game over. But if you could stalk and confront her by using her reflection, if you sneak up on her, you have a chance to conquer and kill the monster. Perhaps in this way, It’s Been Pouring turns Papo’s narrative of despair into a tale of hope.

Rachel Papo is an award winning photographer based in Brooklyn, New York, whose works have been published and exhibited worldwide. She earned a BFA in Fine Arts from Ohio State University (1991–96), and an MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City (2002–05).

Papo has published two monographs, Serial No. 3817131 (2008) and Homeschooled (Kehrer Verlag, 2016). She was selected a finalist for the Santa Fe Prize for Photography, was awarded a NYFA Fellowship, and won a Lucie Award for Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year. Rachel’s works are in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston, among others. She is represented by ClampArt Gallery in New York City.

To learn more about her work or this book, see Rachel Papo’s website, or the publisher: Kehrer Verlag.

About Cary Benbow

Photographer, Writer, Publisher of Wobneb Magazine

View all posts by Cary Benbow →

Location: Online Type: Book Review

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