Mothercraft

Mothercraft is an ongoing body of work that uses press photographs culled from flea markets and eBay to reconsider 20th-century depictions of mothers in the US media. Typed and handwritten text, along with date stamps, creased edges, and stains, layer the backs of the photographs. These images are time capsules, showing us the event pictured and the frame through which they were received. The photographs I have collected illustrate movement, both socially and politically, as records of the shifting identity of motherhood and women’s liberation, but also durationally as physical images that were held, touched, and eventually abandoned. What becomes of a history never intended to be kept but is found because of our ever-connected digital lives?

Each photograph in Mothercraft is backlit as I rephotograph it, and the resulting image simultaneously reveals both the front and back of the print. With a sharp focus on the text, the image can fall further into obscurity, blurred and layered with captions and marks. The fragmented captions often slip past their descriptive roles into the more dogmatic territory and reflect the dynamic push and pull between the personal and the political. They offer information ranging from the objective, such as age and location, to the more partial and idiosyncratic details tied to tradition and duty. These images provide a glimpse into the unstable nature of truth and the complex relationship between image and word.