Meet Alyssa Kapnik Samuel | Photographer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alyssa Kapnik Samuel and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alyssa, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
I started my business about 14 years ago, but it’s only in the last 7 years or so that I’m really doing the kind of work I really love. Coming into this phase of my career, and finding a niche I really feel at home in and love dearly, correlates really closely to the birth of my son, who’s now almost 8.

My specialty is photographing moms bonding with their babies. But that wasn’t always the case.

Until about 8 years ago, I had been doing any and all photography work. Weddings, engagements, dating profile photographs, bar mitzvahs and graduation parties, personal branding. I couldn’t quite figure out what I was working toward. My work didn’t feel like art, and it didn’t really feel like it had a big heart. It was just work.

But when my son was born, I had a monumental internal shift. I was surrounded by birth workers who shamed me during labor, and by the end of my birth, even though I had birthed a healthy little boy, I felt like a failure. Giving birth changed me. It caused me to question so much about what I had believed before about how women are supported and seen in our world. It took me years to be able to talk about my birth without crying. And not the cute kind of crying, either. The trauma of my first birth felt like an overwhelming presence in my body and mind. Fictional characters going into labor on TV caused me to have panic attacks.

So I began to use my camera as a tool for my own healing. I needed a project that could help me focus my attention on birth and other women. I needed to use it to learn about my birth, and to process my experience.

I posted in moms groups online that if a mom was going to deliver a baby, they should contact me, and I would meet them at the hospital right after to photograph them bonding with the baby. I desperately needed to be around women. Around moms. I was incredibly socially isolated at the time — I lived in a place where I didn’t have many friends — and I needed an excuse to talk about birth. To hear other women’s stories. To see with my own eyes that these women and their babies had survived. That they were okay. And by extension, I was okay too.

I photographed first time moms, and newborns meeting older siblings. I photographed women who had preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and surprise medical interventions. I photographed IVF moms and rainbow babies. I photographed women who had had c-sections and vaginal births; medicated births and not.

I did 42 of these sessions. I visited 42 women and their families in the hospital. And I started to heal from my own birth experience.

I still bring up my birth in most of my sessions with moms and their babies now. Because it’s part of why I’m here. My first birth pushed me to focus, in a manner of speaking, on something that I desperately needed to understand. It was an emotional and intellectual education. Those sessions contributed in a huge way to the healing of my heart.

After that immense amount of experience in photographing brand new moms and brand new babies, I started to expand my series of women bonding with their babies to include moms after a few weeks of being with their babies. And then a few months, too. I wanted to see how women were coping years after their births. I heard a birth worker say that women are still postpartum 7 years after their birth. And I felt that every day of my 7 years after my son was born.

The more women I photographed bonding with their babies and young children, the more I heard that this was something new for them. They hadn’t quite seen a true reflection of what it looked like when they loved their children. When they played. When they were so relaxed and calm and totally present. Women don’t often have a way of seeing our own motherhood. Maybe women have had portraits taken, everyone smiling and posing in a beautiful place. But this was something they hadn’t seen. A real reflection of their feelings.

I am grateful all the time that my work has brought me to this place of validating women and myself. It’s an incredible gift.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I kind of fell into photography as a job. I didn’t study it in school. I didn’t even really consider it. When I was young, photography didn’t seem like an acceptable job. Based on what I saw around me, I thought I should be a lawyer or an English PhD or a writer.

I had a camera, but I thought people would look down at me if I ever said I really wanted to use it. I’ve always been grateful for whatever camera I had. It’s always been a social crutch for me — a way for me to have a reason for being in a social situation. A “job” — even when I’m not being paid. It gives me purpose and direction. That’s been true since I was 7 years old, and I started using my mom’s camera when she’d let me. She was so generous with it, and it felt so important and grown up.

When I started charging people for photographing them, it took a lot for me to feel confident in my work.  I had a long period of feeling like I wasn’t worthy of being paid.  And I’ve learned — and am always still learning — a tremendous amount on the job.

I’m a perfectionist, and it’s really hard for me to have a session where I wasn’t able to get the kinds of photographs I envisioned.  Being a photographer isn’t easy for me.  It’s a constant challenge.  But it’s also a huge rush, and I absolutely love the communal aspect of taking a great photograph that gets shared and loved and treasured and framed or filed away for a future date.  I love that photographs are a way of time traveling deep into your own history, or that of your family.  And being the one to deliver that time capsule is such an amazing feeling.  I feel so lucky to be a part of that with families.  And especially with other women.  I love being able to help them connect with their own vision of their family in any small way.

My work is about connection between humans.  I’m so interested in what’s real for a family.  What’s real for a mom and her babies.  Not pretending to be happy, not cheesing for the camera, but really seriously playing.  Bonding.  Being present.  And I work toward that so much in my photographs.  Creating a safe place for those I’m working with to help them get there.  To help create the possibility for the deep, beautiful moments.  It’s incredible when it happens, and it’s what I’m always aiming for.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My constant inspiration, and my partner in everything, is my super artistic husband, Seth Samuel. Seth is a composer for Deep Look, a short-form documentary film series for PBS, and he’s also a podcast sound designer. I often feel like Seth speaks a different language than I do when he’s working. He sees a first draft of a film he’s scoring with no sound except for the voiceover. He sees, essentially, a tiny bug or a lizard or a fish, and Seth has a sense of what instruments he’ll need to tell the story. Who’s the antagonist, who’s the hero? Is the slow moving snail a horn or a woodwind? Are the burrowing bees plucked strings or a xylophone? Seth’s brain works differently than mine does, and I absolutely treasure that about him. He looks at an image and hears music. And in his work, he’s always problem solving. Taking feedback in stride, leaning into things he absolutely loves, and finding ways to talk to non-music folk (those he works with) about music. A maxim he often cites is “talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” Language doesn’t really work in his world.

When I face a challenge in my work, Seth is often able to help me see things from a completely different vantage. His brain is oriented to understand things in a way mine isn’t. And it’s almost always inspiring and helpful. We’re both artists, people often point out to us. But instead, to me, it often feels like each of us is a kind of scientist working with vastly different materials.

Website: https://www.alyssakapnik.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssakapnikportraiture/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alyssakapnikportraiture

Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/alyssa-kapnik-portraiture-denver

Image Credits
Alyssa Kapnik Samuel