Empowering Black moms with pictures

Tiana Lashae is a doula and delivery photographer based mostly out of Ann Arbor. Her enterprise is known as Motherhood Portraits by Tiana Lashae. 

She created an initiative to assist empower Black moms and their well being by means of artwork.

“I’ve been a birth photographer, a newborn photographer for about a decade now, capturing families as they’re welcoming their babies, going through their pregnancy, birth, and postpartum journeys,” she says.

Lashae created the “Black Birth Joy” mission in 2024 to amplify optimistic Black maternal well being tales and assist households to be seen and heard by means of pictures.

She was impressed by a birthing pictures session the place she witnessed a Black mother giving delivery in Ann Arbor with a supportive workforce.

“It was just so beautiful and just to see everyone working together to facilitate such a beautiful birth really, you know, restored faith in me and the health care system… We can have these safe births and those stories need to be shared more,” she shares. 

The mission was initially funded by the Region 9 Perinatal Quality Collaborative in Washtenaw County to assist the delivery journeys of 5 households. 

Lashae says she wished to seize totally different birthing areas: dwelling, the hospital, and delivery facilities. After photographing the households’ journeys, she wrote blogs and distributed the tales.

“I am a woman of color. I think because I’ve been through the system, I’ve lived through the experience to be able to use my talents, to use my voice, to empower families that look like me, that don’t always usually feel seen or feel heard, especially in birth spaces,” she explains.

She says the mission additionally highlights delivery staff in metro Detroit.

Creating extra alternatives for pleasure

Lashae says the appliance for Black Birth Joy mission for this yr will roll out in April or early spring. In the meantime, she hopes to boost $50,000 to support 10 families for delivery pictures packages, as state funding is not out there.

“Hopefully by then there’s been some funding or some, you know, a blessing of some sort so that I can still do this work. And I want to say I want to double the impact,” she shares.

Families will obtain delivery pictures and new child pictures, together with an album. Lashae says the images can even be shared in artwork areas and caregiving areas throughout Wayne and Washtenaw County in hopes to unfold the impression.

“Just to have a statement piece that says you’re welcome here, you’re safe here, our establishment is a champion for Black maternal health,” she says.

Lashae hopes the work evokes households and creates protected areas for sufferers when receiving providers from caregivers.

“Photographs do invoke conversations, and then conversations create change,” she states.

She says it’s essential to create optimistic tales to negate stereotypes and bias for Black delivery experiences. 

“Walking in and seeing a beautiful portrait of a birthing woman smiling and in joy… it combats what the statistics say,” she expresses, including that she hopes the pictures evokes households and helps fight bias by medical professionals. 

In September-December 2026, Lashae will host a mini present for Black Birth Joy on the University of Michigan’s Lane Hall, as a part of the Women’s and Gender Studies for the autumn semester.