I recently started a personal project exploring the themes of motherhood, invisibility and the judgements that many new mothers feel, particularly in regard to breast feeding in public and extended breast feeding of toddlers. Inspired by Magritte’s The Lovers, the series also touches on the topic of post-natal depression (Magritte’s own mother committed suicide). It was a project that I had ‘conceived’ when my son was just 3 months old and I eventually was able to realize it a couple of years later when he was 2 and a half years old. It was by pure coincidence that there was a news item at the time about the airline KLM and it’s treatment of a breastfeeding mother, so I released one of the images on twitter and then it got picked up by the Daily Mail and El Mundo. The images will be part of a joint exhibition in Edinburgh in Sept/Oct 2019 by Spilt Milk and will also be displayed in the Port International Photo Fest in October. I’m really happy about the amount of positive comments the project has received and that it has started an important conversation about the topics, and I can’t thank the women (and babies) who participated enough - they were all very supportive and enthusiastic about taking part and having their voices heard as well.
Find out more info about the Edinburgh exhibition here:
https://www.spiltmilkgallery.com/exhibitions/2019/9/28/re-birth-members-show-19
You can follow the project as it grows at this Instagram account: www.instagram.com/_thisismotherhood
You can read the original articles in the Daily Mail here:
And El Mundo here:
https://www.elmundo.es/f5/2019/07/27/5d39bd6e21efa060088b45c4.html