When photographer Heather Doughty first had the idea of celebrating remarkable women in the community, her goal was to get 52 women to agree to be photographed — one a week for a full year. Now, nearly five years later, Inspire: The Women’s Portrait Project has celebrated more than 500 women.
On Sunday, September 17th, Doughty will be launching a display of Inspire’s latest project called ‘Mom Bod 2.0’, where portraits of remarkable mothers and their stories will be publicly displayed on the windows at the VentureNorth building in downtown Peterborough.
The inspiration for the project dates back to Doughty’s own childhood when she was raised by “a fiercely independent woman,” as she describes her mother. Unheard of for women at the time, her mother returned to work shortly after giving birth. Following the death of her husband (when Doughty was just nine years old), she then became a single mother and never remarried.
Doughty was already a photographer by then, with her first camera a Kodak Brownie her father gave to her when she was very young. After he passed, she used her photos of him to keep their connection and her memories alive. Now, as a professional wedding and boudoir photographer, Doughty gives others the chance to “hold time” in their own hands.
“I love to capture the feeling of things,” Doughty explains. “I want you to look at the images I create, and I want you to have a feeling, a connection. In every aspect of what I do with my photography, I do it so that the viewer feels connected.”
Doughty says her “absolute favourite thing to do” is “body positive boudoir,” which ultimately prompted her to begin the Inspire project. She explains that oftentimes when she’s photographing women, they come in shy because there’s a piece of their body they’re unhappy with.
Doughty tries to get them comfortable and feeling proud and supported and, by the end of the session, their attitude towards their own body has changed.
“When the women leave, they feel so powerful,” says Doughty. “You can just see it when they walk out the door. They feel sexy and they feel alive.”
Seeing women feel empowered made her want to create something to help women tell their stories.
“Inspire came from a conversation about how society puts so much pressure on women to be this stereotype,” she recalls. “I wanted a project where I could photograph women just candidly. I just want to show them how beautiful they are and how important they are.”
Knowing how some women don’t like to be photographed, Doughty wasn’t sure she would get many to agree to be in front of the camera for her project. She asked four women who inspired her if she could take their portrait, and also asked them to write their own story in 500 to 1,500 words. Then she asked those women to nominate a couple of other women, and then those women to nominate a few more, and so the process continued.
Today, Inspire has expanded to other projects, including Mom Bod, of which the second instalment will be launching next month. Named for the colloquial term for the post-pregnancy and early motherhood body, the goal of the project is to showcase and celebrate mothers who are proud to have mom bods — while actively changing the connotation of the term.
“Why is mom bod a derogatory term and dad bod is a sexy stereotype?” Doughty asks. “Moms grew humans. Mom bods are beautiful and they created life.”
The first instalment of Doughty’s Mom Bod project launched at the VentureNorth Building last July. In all the portraits, which hang full-size from the windows of the building, the women are dressed in sports bras and leggings and candidly photographed in any position they want, “because that’s how you get the true essence of a person” says Doughty.
Something that hadn’t been done for Inspire’s previous projects, each portrait had a QR code that would lead to an audio recording of the mothers reading their own stories. Doughty says hearing women speak their own words in their own voice creates empathy and understanding.
“I firmly believe that if you don’t know a person, that’s when fear can come in, and a fear of a person leads to walls,” explains Doughty. “If you hear a person’s story, or even just the way they frame a sentence or the way they speak, the minute that happens, you become connected and, all of a sudden, a community is built.”
Another of Inspire’s projects that really highlights stories from women in the community is the FarmHER project. This one was inspired by Doughty’s great-great-grandmother who, after her husband died in a tragic accident, took over a farm all on her own while raising six children and remaining a single mother.
Doughty, who grew up north of Buckhorn in a farming community, calls her great-great-grandmother a “trailblazer” for continuing to farm despite the taboos of the age.
“When you think of a farmer, most people think of men,” she points out. “If you think of the woman, it’s the farmer’s wife with a kid on her hip in the kitchen — which is 110 per cent true, but (for her great-great-grandmother) she’s also driving a tractor. She’s equally as capable as her partner.”
The FarmHER project is a bit more in depth, with Doughty aiming to visit women on their farms once in the spring or summer and once in the winter to show the different aspects and day-to-day life on the farm. The project will launch at the Lang Pioneer village as early as 2024.
Another Inspire project currently in the works involves recreating a photo from 1960. Photojournalist Ormond Gigli famously took a photo titled ‘Girls in the Windows’ featuring dozens of women — including his own wife — dressed in their finest attire standing candidly in the empty windows of a New York City brownstone that was demolished the next day.
Don’t worry … Doughty didn’t make the region’s most inspiring women stand in a soon-to-be-demolished building’s empty windows (the Inspire board wouldn’t let her, she jokes). Instead, she took a snapshot of one of the windows of the J.J. Turner building, blew it up lifesize, and set it up in her own studio.
With help from The Neighbourhood Vintage and Statement House, 52 Inspire nominees were dressed up for the occasion and their photos were taken in the window frame.
Though technical difficulties have set her back a bit, the photo re-creation will be launched this fall and will be Inspire’s exhibit at the SPARK Photo Festival in April 2024.
Also next year, Inspire will also host their second International Women’s Day event and will bring back Day of the Girl, a project that celebrates young women in the community.
“It’s a beautiful event to host in person because the girls get to come, their parents come, the grandparents come,” Doughty says, adding that’s why they chose not to run it during the pandemic. “It’s so positive and so full of energy.”
In 2021, Inspire also launched the “She Inspires Me” photo essay project that encouraged people from around the world to submit a photo they had taken of a woman in their life who inspires them and up to 1,500 words on why. They received nominations from as far as Australia, Israel, and Germany, with stories of remarkable women, including a group called the Port Melbourne Icebergs who meet up every day to swim together in the ocean in matching swimsuits.
Though it’s no surprise to Doughty just how many inspiring women there are in the world, or just how many people are eager to recognize and celebrate these women, she admits she’s surprised by how much the project has grown and how wide an audience it has reached.
“It’s beautiful and amazing,” she says. “I’m hoping that we can at some point hit one thousand portraits and then have a big party, because that would be incredible to have all these people together.”
The Mom Bod 2.0 exhibit launches at the VentureNorth Building at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 17th. To keep up to date on upcoming project launches, visit inspirethewomensportraitproject.com or follow Inspire on Instagram and Facebook. You can find more of Heather Doughty’s photography on her website at heatherdoughtyphotography.com.
