The Midwife's Archive

The midwife’s archives are the collections of Elsy Salomonsson: hundreds of brochures, photos and personal notes that she col­lected, wrote, and kept from her time working as a Swedish midwife in Tunisia in the 1970s. Being a midwife in Tunisia in the 1970s meant being at the center of what was considered to be a key in the shaping of the Modern Tunisian woman, and of the modern nation: family planning. Elsy’s collected brochures, clinical material and newspaper cuts, allow us to dive into the discourse and imagery around women’s bodies, sexuality and reproduction, an ideal of the modern family, and how it was represented as the condition for the prosperity and development of the newly independent nation.