Maternity and Motherhood are two of the most beautiful stages in a woman’s life. Creating, carrying and protecting a human being until it’s ready to face the outside world is something so ravishing that it should be celebrated everyday. However, it appears that our society today, instead of applauding mothers and telling them what astonishing creatures they are, focuses on how to lose the extra weight they gained throughout the pregnancy and how to get the body they had before it, shaming them for their stretch marks and scars.

Photographer Natalie McCain started The Honest Body Project last year capturing in black and white the raw beauty of mothers and mothers-to-be, women of all shapes and sizes, finding perfection in imperfection. „ I wanted to do something to help women see the beauty in themselves,” she writes on her website. Specializing in maternity portraits, Natalie, who is also a mother of two herself, highlights the details of the human body in the most natural way. Choosing to work in black and white her photographs look more intimate, rendering the flaws and defects in the most amazing way by picturing a reality- that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

Natalie runs her own business now and works on her photography projects. From early pregnancies to the postpartum period she tells the stories of several women about their needs and struggles, their problems and support and within these, their ways to happiness. The strong and powerful message they send is meant to inspire women across the world to embrace their bodies, to love and cherish them and to be proud of who they are and how they look like- each one in their own unique way. Because, after all, this body they hate so much creates another tiny body they love enormously. So why not love them both?

Further down you can see some of Natalie’s pieces of art and marvel at them.

You can find Natalie and her projects also on Facebook and on her personal website: thehonestbodyproject.com