Photo courtesy of Alex Barber
Frozen Families is a series of images created by photographing vintage family-themed children’s book pages frozen within ice. During in-vitro fertilization, embryos are cryogenically preserved “on ice”. As my spouse and I experienced repeated unsuccessful transfers and pregnancy loss, I thought about the most mundane activities that I would have done with my children that we would never get to experience. After years of working to build our family, it is inevitable that we start to idealize the realities of raising children. These family portraits are a visual metaphor of our hopes and dreams, preserved and idealized in ice, but also compromised and destroyed as every endeavor ends unsuccessfully.