Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher — 12 MOONS
4 September, 2026 — 4 October 2026
Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher, 12 MOONS, 2026
12 MOONS is a long-form documentary project by Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher that reconsiders photographic representations of birth through a photographic series with documentary focus on twelve Australian homebirths across twelve lunar cycles. Developed over nine years, the work brings together the artist’s extensive folio, analogue photography, research and contemporary visual storytelling to expand the visual canon of birth, foregrounding care, embodiment and lived experience while challenging idealised or clinical depictions. Working with the tactile qualities of analogue film, Wynne-Hoelscher creates images that embrace vulnerability, intimacy and imperfection, situating birth within a broader visual history of documentary photography.
The project exists across both photographic series and artist photobook, where sequencing, rotation, pacing and materiality become integral to the narrative, translating the rhythms of labour into a tactile reading experience. Rather than functioning as a catalogue of the series, the publication forms a parallel artwork in which image, object and narrative converge. Presented together, the exhibition and photobook offer complementary encounters with the work: the gallery expands the series into an immersive spatial experience, while the book invites a slower, intimate engagement with its narrative structure. Together, they seek to make visible what has become culturally invisible, encouraging conversation rather than silence, and reminding audiences that birth belongs to all of us.
Rooted in extensive research into the history of birth photography and midwifery, 12 MOONS revisits the pioneering work of American midwife Ina May Gaskin and The Farm’s community homebirth movement of the 1970s from a contemporary Australian perspective. Created almost fifty years later, and documented during the years surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic—when homebirth experienced renewed visibility—the project reflects on the evolving relationships between birth, autonomy and community. Rather than recreating this history, 12 MOONS offers a new chapter within it, connecting past and present through analogue image-making, the photobook and exhibition as interconnected forms of storytelling. In doing so, it meditates on a timely cultural question: How did one of humanity’s most universal experiences become one of its least visible?
Artist Bio
Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher is an Australian contemporary photographic artist, filmmaker and publisher whose practice explores the intersections of documentary photography, material culture and visual storytelling. Working across long-form photographic projects, photobooks and exhibitions, she investigates themes of memory, ritual, embodiment and the ways photography shapes our understanding of lived experience. Her practice is grounded in extensive research and analogue image-making, using the tactile qualities of film, sequencing and bookmaking to create immersive works that extend beyond the photographic image.
With a background spanning photography, filmmaking and creative direction, Wynne-Hoelscher approaches each project as both an artistic and editorial inquiry, where image, object and narrative are considered as a unified whole. Her work is recognised for its quiet intimacy, material sensitivity and nuanced approach to documentary practice, creating photobooks that function as autonomous artworks while extending their narratives into immersive exhibition environments.
Wynne-Hoelscher’s work has received national and international recognition through awards, publications and exhibitions. Her debut artist book, NUÑEZ (2023), was developed through a collaborative self-publishing process with Nuñez Rojas, bringing together photography, personal history and lived experience through a visual and editorial dialogue. Featuring photography by Wynne-Hoelscher, editorial collaboration between Wynne-Hoelscher and Nuñez Rojas, and book design by Brigette Cantarella, the publication explores identity, cultural heritage and the complexities of representation. NUÑEZ was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum Photography Centre in London and acquired by the National Art Library, where it is permanently accessible to researchers, curators and the general public. Her second photobook, 12 MOONS (2026), expands the visual canon of birth through a long-form documentary project centering it focus on Australian homebirth culture. Winner of the Stories Award at the Australian Photography Awards (2020), the series further establishes her contribution to contemporary documentary photography through its considered approach to image-making, sequencing and the photobook as a tactile, immersive form of storytelling.
Alongside her independent practice, Wynne-Hoelscher co-founded Look Both Ways with Brigette Cantarella, an independent publishing house dedicated to artist books and contemporary photographic publications. Emerging from a shared commitment to the photobook as an artistic medium, Look Both Ways extends their collaborative approach to publishing, supporting the development of new works by both established and emerging artists. Through this practice, Wynne-Hoelscher continues to explore the book as a critical site for artistic expression, collaboration and cultural exchange.
Website + Instagram + Publishing
Pre-order 12 MOONS photo-book via Look Both Ways