Beauty and Melee

Standing barefoot on the threshold of a lake in winter; her child as witness, she performs her mourning. Before long, moments of stillness become movement.

Wakefulness

Lapping waves move through the depths of her own consciousness, as she gropes delicately toward her own perfect imbalance.

A Surrendering Mother

A surrendering mother longing for freedom, she dives deeper, searching.

My maternal body is subject to fears, tears, and traumas, some of them memories—real or imagined—I wish to be free of. Reshaped and re-written, chemically driven, flooding every waking moment, even the landscape of dreams.

With my camera as witness, I perform my mourning. To give a face to my fear—my body becomes a mirror. Each photograph becomes a ritual of exposure, a bridge to wakefulness. The anticipation of a developing image in a darkroom; proof that this psychological warfare is real. The camera captures the demons, and the photographs themselves become the objects of my suffering. My nightmare’s keepers.

My transition to motherhood is full of joy and suffering. Matrescence. A transformation aesthetically unexplored. An unexposed passage, as common as breath, yet seldom portrayed as part of common life. A common human experience even more commonly ignored.

Lapping waves move through the depths of my own consciousness, as I grope delicately toward my own perfect imbalance. By and by, like fragments of light through a lens, I move through life’s liminal moments. The beauty and melee of motherhood.