{"id":489,"date":"2022-08-04T18:08:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-04T18:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/culture\/photos-showing-what-motherhood-is-really-like\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T18:08:11","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T18:08:11","slug":"photos-showing-what-motherhood-is-really-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/culture\/photos-showing-what-motherhood-is-really-like\/","title":{"rendered":"Photos showing what motherhood is really like"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Photos showing what motherhood is really like<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

(Image credit: Sophie Ebrard)<\/p>\n

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For International Women\u2019s Day, Deborah Nicholls-Lee explores the work of photographers who look beyond clich\u00e9s, revealing the physical and psychological changes after giving birth.<\/p>\n

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The ambitious project, which was published in a book<\/a> in 2015, was a rallying cry \u201cto break those hierarchies\u201d, she says, and bring the attention back to the mother. Renaissance painters had long made a meme of the adoration of baby Jesus, but the experience of the Madonna was nowhere to be seen. \u201cWhat I became really aware of was how overlooked normal people are, and the incredible stories people were telling me time and time again,\u201d says Lewis, whose editorial work is often focused on the famous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Chieska<\/picture>\n
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Chieska and Floyd, from One Day Young, 2015 (Credit: Jenny Lewis)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Perched on the end of their beds with minimal photographic equipment, Lewis found an extraordinary openness in the new mothers. She says: \u201cPeople don\u2019t have any self-consciousness when they are photographed at that point because they are so overwhelmed with emotion [and] an amazing authentic self comes across.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, WaterAid invited Lewis to repeat the project in Malawi, where some of the women faced a six-hour walk home from the birthing centre. Though her subjects for both locations varied in age, ethnicity and background, the universality of the motherhood experience in the first 24 hours was evident. \u201cAll of these women, up until this point, have had such different lives, but at this moment, they\u2019re all the same,\u2019\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Liviness<\/picture>\n
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Liviness Banda, from One Day Young Malawi for WaterAid, 2016 (Credit: Jenny Lewis)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The motivation for the project came from Lewis\u2019s own hugely positive experience of becoming a mother, which she felt contrasted with the fear and negativity of most social messaging. \u201cI felt amazing afterwards, so I felt really frustrated that I wasn\u2019t given this seed of confidence from the media, from other people, from conversations. And, visually, there didn\u2019t seem to be that supportive image of motherhood that you could be feeling really empowered,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A positive side of motherhood<\/strong><\/p>\n

Six-thousand miles away, Taiwanese photographer Annie Hsiao-Ching Wang also had to work hard to get the topic of motherhood the recognition she felt it deserved. When, in 2000, she began formulating what would become the viral The Mother as Creator<\/a> series, her PhD supervisor advised her that \u201cnobody would care about the personal story of an Asian mother\u201d and that \u2018\u2019such a small issue was not worthy of study\u201d, she says. Undeterred, Wang transferred to a different university and pressed on with the project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The day before I was due to give birth, 2001, from The Mother as Creator, 2001 to present (Credit: Annie Wang)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She began with an honest, unsentimental photograph of herself while pregnant. The following year, she photographed herself with her baby son, Tong, in front of the previous photo. Wang has continued to repeat the process for 19 years now, the previous portraits fading into the distance behind each new one. The photographs, says Wang, are like our memory. \u201cSomething a long time ago becomes blurry, almost disappearing. But it is still there in our deepest mind, and we can feel it more or less influencing who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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At the same height, 2014, from The Mother as Creator, 2001 to present (Credit: Annie Wang)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As well as physical change, Wang\u2019s photographs also document internal struggles. In I sign; I exist<\/a>, she autographs her pregnant belly to affirm her ownership of her body. \u201cA mother was no longer to be seen as just a \u2018container\u2019,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy body had been my body for all these years, and to witness it change beyond my control was disturbing,\u201d says French documentary portrait photographer Sophie Ebrard<\/a> in the confessional audio diary which formed part of her 2019 Amsterdam exhibition, I didn\u2019t want to be a mum<\/a>. The first of Ebrard\u2019s two pregnancies was unplanned, and matrescence, the process of becoming a mother, proved a difficult transition. \u201cI loved my son, but I didn\u2019t love being a mother,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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I didn\u2019t want to be a mum, 2019 (Credit: Sophie Ebrard)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Eschewing photography\u2019s tendency to romanticise infancy, from the winged cherubs<\/a> of Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) to cute clickbait on social media, the muscular brute that Ebrard depicts, with its suffocating grip on its mother, makes refreshing but uneasy viewing. Rawer, more confronting pieces, such as the bloody placenta straddled by her feet and a film loop of her stiff, lactating nipple, are an honest window on the less-documented, messy side of motherhood. \u201cI want to educate people on the realities of the experience,\u201d she says, \u201cand create a platform for other people to come forward and express their feelings without guilt or shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photography through play<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the photo book Kinderwunsch<\/a> (2013), Mexican photographer Ana Casas Broda communicates her personal journey through fertility treatment, pregnancy and parenthood. Like Ebrard, she seeks a more nuanced representation of motherhood. She says: \u201cI wanted the project to be as complex as the experience of becoming a mother can be \u2013 to raise questions, to open up these contradictions about the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Videogame,<\/picture>\n
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Videogame, 2009, from Kinderwunsch, 2006-12 (Credit: Ana Casas Broda)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Martin, the elder of her two sons, came up with many of the ideas for the shoots, such as wrapping his mother up like an Egyptian mummy. \u201cThe games ended up becoming very symbolic and strong images,\u201d says Casas Broda. \u201cThe photographs were always a surprise. I set up the lights, we prepared the scenario and then started to play\u2026 One image would lead to the other. I couldn\u2019t stop imagining photographs; they would flow in my mind continuously, and come together with my son\u2019s new ideas and the games we would invent.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Casas Broda, preserving these intimate moments with her children also caused her to reflect on how she herself was parented. She says: \u201cIn some of these images, a painful feeling would also come to the surface, and led me to understand difficult emotions from my own childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Ana<\/picture>\n
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Ana Playroom V, 2010, from Kinderwunsch, 2006-12 (Credit: Ana Casas Broda)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Pain and imperfection in childhood, as seen through the eyes of the mother, is a prominent theme in the work of American photographer Sally Mann, who trained her lens on her three young children in the controversial photography book Immediate Family (1992). Images of Emmet\u2019s bloody nose<\/a>, Virginia\u2019s wet bed<\/a> and Jessie\u2019s face swollen with insect bites<\/a> offer an unvarnished view of raising children in rural Virginia; while sensual poses, nudity and smoking create a disturbing blur between the world of the adult and the child.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The collision of these two spheres is also poignant in Mary Ellen Mark<\/a>\u2019s posthumously published Streetwise Revisited<\/a> (2015), documenting the transition of Erin \u2018Tiny\u2019 Brockwell from 13-year-old child prostitute to mother of ten. Mark (1940-2015), who had no children of her own, formed a maternal attachment to the troubled Tiny as she photographed her over 30 years, even offering to bring her from Seattle to New York to live with her.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Brushing<\/picture>\n
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Brushing Hair, 2010 from Mother, 2013 (Credit: Elinor Carucci)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For Israeli-American artist Elinor Carucci, the dynamic was the reverse, as she began her career when still a teenager by photographing her mother \u2013 a woman she describes as both \u201cdemanding and strict\u201d and \u201cloving and beautiful\u201d. \u201cWhen I started to take pictures of her, so many things happened. All those qualities that were difficult to deal with became kind of material for work,\u201d she says. \u201cIt made me see so much more of her and got our relationship to deeper places.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, now a parent of twins, she published Mother<\/a>, the culmination of 10 years\u2019 work, and a bid for a more authentic depiction of motherhood. She says: \u201cYou do have Madonna and child moments, but it\u2019s maybe 0.8% of what it is to be a mother.\u201d Instead, the collection captures the forced intimacy of a child joining her on the toilet or exploring her naked body; and the caesarean scar, linea nigra and engorged breasts of her post-partum body. Can we say that society\u2019s depiction of motherhood is now truthful? \u201cIt\u2019s getting there,\u201d she replies.<\/p>\n

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