Every 30 seconds a baby dies from premature birth. That is a thought that crosses my mind every day I spend with my son, Leo. When I was pregnant, I developed toxemia, also known as pre-eclampsia. Leo was born a few weeks early, healthy; but what if he was one of those premature babies that died?

When I began these images, I experimented with photographing myself in a 30 second exposure. I lined up the framing I wanted, set my camera on a tripod and activated the time-release button to give me enough time to run in to frame. This was an experiment. I love doing long exposures and had not previously done a portrait series on myself. It wasn’t until my son ran in to the exposure, grabbed me and said he was scared that the concept became something more meaningful than an experimental long exposure to me.

This series is a group of 30-second exposures of me holding my son and eventually without my son. The images are sequenced from visions of our home with my son to vision in the morgue with my son’s spirit.