Pictures of the week: 40 Weeks And A mirror, by Sophie Starzenski

There are some simple documentary projects that perhaps we all wish we’d undertaken, if only we had been bothered: photographing our children’s growth, our dying parents or grandparents, the changing seasons in the garden.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

Argentine photographer Sophie Starzenski, 28, decided to record one of the most obvious, yet never less than wondrous, set of changes humans undergo by taking a self-portrait every month while pregnant with her first child.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

Inspired by a friend who had done something similar, Starzenski posed in her underwear in front of a mirror and started shooting at four weeks.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

She took her last pregnant photograph just four hours before she went into labour. The final shot in the series is of her holding her eight-week-old son, Simon.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

Starzenski obscured her face with her camera, because 'the photographs are not about me, they’re about the changes to my body', she says.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

Similarly, she chose to go without clothes, because she didn’t want the project to become a catalogue of changing maternity-wear. 'I wanted a memory of my pregnancy, and I wanted to take the pictures myself. It was a simple project, just honest and quick.' Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

Starzenski turns a deep bronze in her fourth month, courtesy of a summer beach holiday in Uruguay’s Punta del Este. She gave birth on 15 July this year, deep in Argentina’s winter.→ Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

How does she feel, looking back at the shots? 'It’s too soon to tell,' she laughs. Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

'I can still remember very clearly feeling that large and stretched, and I still am.' Photograph: Sophie Starzenski

See more of Sophie's work at sophiestarzenski.com Photograph: Sophie Starzenski