What’s behind this woman’s emotions? It’s not what you think
Midwife Annette Rockley adopted the classic Demi Moore pregnancy pose for this portrait as a provocation, a call to action. She died less than three weeks after these pictures were taken.
Looking straight down the barrel of the camera in the first shot as she adopts the classic Demi Moore pregnancy photo pose, the woman seems determined and defiant, vulnerable and frightened, all at once.
Moments later, in the second frame, the dam breaks.
Annette Rockley can be forgiven for the range of emotions coursing through her as the camera captured her, body and soul. She is, was, not pregnant. In fact she had just 16 days to live.
Annette, a midwife and mother of four, died in December last year, her belly bloated by the ovarian cancer that all too quickly took her life. She was 61.
The pose was Annette’s idea, a conscious bid to draw attention to ovarian cancer and the need for better early detection.
Until her diagnosis with stage 4 cancer Annette was working full-time with barely a symptom.
The photo has hung in the Museum of Australian Photography in Melbourne for the past two months as a finalist in the Bowness Prize, and is now a finalist in the Head On international portrait awards being showcased at the Bondi Pavilion.
But photographer Kate Kennedy hopes the portrait of her close friend will lead to more than recognition through an award.
They both wanted it to be the catalyst for greater discussion about this particularly deadly form of cancer, and the need for more research, including the development of an early detection test to help thousands of Australian women avoid Annette’s fate.
“I met Annette through my work photographing women giving birth and her work as a home birth midwife. We spent many nights sitting together in the middle of the night waiting for babies to be born,” Kate says.
Kate says Annette came up with the idea of doing a photo in the style first made famous on the cover of Vanity Fair 33 years ago by photographer Annie Leibovitz and actor Demi Moore.
Annette wanted to capture the irony of her spending years looking after pregnant women and then seeing herself in the mirror looking so much like one.
“At the time Annette was extremely weak and could only stand for minutes at a time,” Kate says.
“We found some light by a window. She threw off the dress and posed, and as soon as I saw the photo in the back of the camera, I said ‘You look so strong’. She said ‘I don’t feel strong’ and burst into tears.
“But even in this moment she was still thinking about other women, her cause very much in her mind. Through the tears she told me, ‘I don’t want to take away from the absolute beauty of pregnant women, but this is important too’.”
According to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation a woman dies from the disease every eight hours in Australia.
Survival rates are far lower than other cancers among females at 49 per cent after five years from diagnosis compared to 92 per cent for breast cancer and 74 per cent for cervical cancer.
There is no early detection test for ovarian cancer, with a pap or cervical smear not picking it up.
If it is detected at stage one (fewer than one in five cases) there is a 90 per cent chance of survival, but around 70 per cent of ovarian cancers are not detected until they have reached advanced stages and spread to other parts of the body.
Kate says Annette was “a woman of incredible strength and integrity, but very fun and joyous”.
“She was a passionate midwife who loved women deeply and fiercely advocated on their behalf,” she says.
Kate hopes to carry on that advocacy, setting up a fundraising page with all donations going directly to the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation.
