Kerstin Hacker photographed the series Maternity Ward in the Vinohrady Hospital in Czechoslovakia and won the Emma/Agfa Prize for Female Photojournalists in Germany in 1993 with this series. The powerful and uncompromising images reveal a different and provocative view of childbirth.
Vinohrady Hospital is a large teaching hospital in the centre of Prague and the maternity ward dealt with over thousand births a year. The series gives an insight into the busy department of the hospital and challenges the romantic narrative surrounding childbirth.
Kerstin Hacker studied at FAMU (University of Applied Arts in Prague) and is now Course Leader for the BA Photography and MA Photography at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.
The show is part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. This year’s Festival of Ideas theme ‘Power and Resistance’ was an ideal time to show the work, as the work discusses existing power structures in a maternity ward.
