"Early on in pregnancy my partner and I were told we had a high probability that were were carrying a baby with Down's Syndrome. Despite this, I was not prepared for how I would respond after Alice was born and diagnosed. Alice did not feel like my other children and part of my response was to pull away from her. I was fraught with anxiety that rippled through to every aspect of my relationship with her. My anxieties penetrated my dreams. On reflection I saw that Alice was feeling my rejection of her, and that caused me further pain. I saw that the responsibility lay with me: I had to dig deep into my own prejudices. The result was that as my fear dissolved, I fell in love with my daughter. We all did."
The figures in 2015 in the UK told us that 92% of Down's syndrome babies were terminated at the pre-natal screening stage of the pregnancy.
She finishes her preface with a brief explanation of how photographic Alice invites us as a society to reflect on our relationship with 'difference' of all kinds. She says:
"Ultimately, this is also a story about love and what gets in the way of that. The process of photographing this work helped me to shine a light on why I struggled to love her, which was essentially fear and uncertainty. Alice has been a huge part of the process, guiding me to what needed to be expressed. I always knew she loved me, it was never about that, it was always about me needing to fall in love with her - which I did. She is in the middle of everything that we all do now as a family and is loved unconditionally, as it should be."
Information can be found at: http://www.siandavey.com/humannature
Images can be found at: http://www.siandavey.com/humannature
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