Hold my Hand

Street lamps blink yellow while I climb up the barrio stairs and go through a metallic door. I pass a police checkpoint on my way up. Anticipating a dark and heavy mood, my prejudice beats like a heart. But the women drink Gatorade and smile. They are discussing the order of pills for an abortion process one of them will go through. “Thanks for staying with me tonight. I don’t want to do this alone,” she says. Her socks are purple with white hearts.

“Hold my Hand” explores sisterhood in the context of abortion rights in Venezuela, a country where it is criminalized. This project documents clandestine abortion processes, contraction-inducing plants and herbs, and anonymously portrays companions, the women who risk their freedom so that others can go through a termination of pregnancy safely. The prison sentence can be indefinite.

The visual narrative of these stories can begin to close the information gap that exists between women and sexual and reproductive education in Venezuela. Public entities have not published maternal and infant mortality figures since 2016, and the health minister who dared to divulge was immediately fired. Women’s health simply does not exist in official data. Unawareness puts women at risk, especially the 94.5% of the population that lives below the poverty line, according to the human rights organization Provea (2021).

The companions are part of a secret network of women that manage the knowledge of how to carry out an abortion based on the protocol of the World Health Organization and experience. For this project, I designed three levels of participation to safeguard their identities. Firstly, I photograph and interview the companions about their most significant experiences. These portraits are made in a uniform approach, utilizing a draped sheet that the companions decide how to place so they can remain anonymous. The second visual approach consists of photographing abortive plants and herbs used by the most seasoned companions, inspired by botanical illustrations. Lastly, I photograph companions supporting others in their abortion processes using shadow, light and framing to protect their faces.

The PhMuseum Grant would be an important amplifier for “Hold my Hand” because of the wide range of engaged audiences it reaches that can connect with this project’s intersectional coverage of women's rights and female psychology. This support will allow me to work with networks of women, showing how they have formed alliances with rural communities in the Merida and Miranda states to teach the ancient knowledge of plants for gynecological health and self care in the most isolated places of the country where maternal mortality is extremely high. It will also support the documentation of more assisted abortions in Caracas. In this last phase of the project I will look deeper into the concept of the sisterhood I witnessed while watching the companions work before, during and after abortion processes.

A WhatsApp notification glowed on my phone the next morning. It was from the companion that helped the woman with the purple socks: “She’s doing well and feeling better than last night. She says thank you for holding her hand.”