Blog
‘Mama’, ‘Mom’, ‘MooooooOooom’
Recently, I spent a morning photographing a mom who truly understood this feeling. She’s photographer herself and realized she was capturing everything but it wasn’t the whole story. She had made a deliberate choice to step in front of mine. We started in the yard and gradually wandered toward the woods. Her baby was heavy and soft in her arms, content to be carried. Her four-year-old was barefoot within mili-seconds, pulling his mother’s dress, asking her to play with him, to come here, to watch this. His moods changed quickly, he got sulky. He is four after all.
Documenting motherhood; a breast feeding journey
After many hospital visits and late nights, Alice was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. She very quickly lost weight, and became very weak. Suddenly Erin's refusal to stop breastfeeding wasn't just love, it was a lifeline. When Alice was so unwell and couldn't eat, when insulin needles and bruises became the new normal, nursing was the one source of comfort that held and kept her safe. The thing people had pressured Erin to give up became the very thing that helped her daughter through the most difficult period of her young life.
Take The Picture
Photography is vulnerable. It’s an intimate exchange of trust. It breaks self image wide open. I know that feeling. That the shape of you is wrong. It’s the feeling that is wrong, not the shape. And the more I hear it the more I understand that it’s rarely, truly coming from the core being of the person in front of me. It’s taught. We are taught to pick ourselves apart. Yet each time I hear some version of 'let me hide', it’s still jarring.