Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought of your period—and everything that comes along with it—as gross. You have, right? Jen Lewis—a menstrual designer, as she calls herself—is working to change that very perception in her photo series, Beauty in Blood. Her artwork will be on display at an exhibition called "Widening the Cycle: A Menstrual Cycle & Reproductive Justice Art Show" taking place in Boston from June 4-6.
In an e-mail to WomensHealthMag.com, Jen said that switching from using tampons to a menstrual cup is what first inspired her to start this project. “Blood, gore, and gratuitous violence are everywhere in pop culture—news, sports, movies/TV, video games, music, etc.—but menstrual blood had been completely scrubbed from the visual landscape, save a few iconic and negative images such as the movie Carrie," she said. "This is shifting now, but when I started working on Beauty in Blood in 2012, menstruation wasn’t getting the same level of press it is now.”
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Jen said that her time working as an assistant at the University of Michigan in the Division of Infectious Diseases also played a role in her wanting to start this project. “I’ve always loved biological science and been interested in the body, so Beauty in Blood seems like a natural marriage of my love of both fine art and biological science,” she told us.
Here are some of the pics:
Aren’t they stunning? Rob Lewis, Jen's husband, does the actual photography, while Jen works with the blood. “When we first started, all of the art was made in 'real time'—meaning while I was actively menstruating,” she said. Jen explained that she would remove her cup, and after Rob set up the lights and the camera, she would pour the blood into an empty toilet bowl. "Every pour looked different," she said.
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Rob eventually discovered a really neat technique for photographing water, and now, the pair use a small aquarium and a mixture of salt and fresh water. “This mixture creates two different densities, which makes for more interesting blood movement,” she told us.
Pretty freakin’ cool if you ask us.
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