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A Mother’s Love
Lauren Prentice
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Ana Casas Broda, kinderwunsch (Lucio and Ana), 10 March 2010

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Contents Page
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Abstract

Aims and Purpose

A Mother’s Love initially came from an image I had taken in the summer 2020 (see
Fig 1), I was photographing a Mother with her Daughter and during the shoot I felt
this intense bond between them, on looking back at my images one photo in
particular stood out to me and I went on to analyse it further. I had found that I was
seeing a range of emotions from one image such as love, bonding, comfort and a
child that was so dependent on the Mother, I wondered who my subject was before
her new role of Mum. This lead me to many question’s but in particular a question of
the Mother’s identity and how her own identity may have changed when she entered
Motherhood for the first time, I want to find out a question of “how does the new role
of Motherhood affect a woman’s identity?” From my own experience early on in
parenting I felt I had lost myself and it was something I wasn’t made to be aware of, I
was happy but I felt overtime I was losing “me” and I felt a need to get that back to
some extent. I want to know if others have been through this sense of loss, Whether
Motherhood had changed their own identity, if Motherhood affected bonds with
others and their thoughts and feelings behind all this. I also wanted to find out how
they felt now if for some of them a few years may have passed on and if anything
had changed from the time of birth to now, had their identity changed and was the
bond with their child or other relationships different from previously.

Fig 1
Lauren Prentice, A Mother’s Love, 2020
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Literature Review

I went on to some research to see if I was able to connect my ideas and find any
information on this topic of identity and bonding. I first came across an online
exhibition from the photographers gallery (Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood
and Identity, 2013) which I came to realize was also a book called Home Truths
Photography and Motherhood (Bright, 2013). The exhibition and book show another
side to Motherhood, where we are normally used to seeing the media and society
portray becoming a parent with happy images of the perfect family, the book
portrayed the truth where anything was accepted to be photographed and there
wasn’t a need to hide what really went on behind closed doors. In the forward of the
book Clare Grafik talks about some of the topics included “Susan Bright has
gathered a group of contemporary artists all dealing with the many truths of
motherhood: it’s joys and sorrows, it’s sometimes harrowing chaos, it’s immense
expectations. Some of them reflect on the profound shift in a woman’s (and
sometimes a man’s) identity when she becomes a parent, and the conflicting senses
of loss and gain that can arise” (Bright, 2013). A photographer in the book Hanna
Putz talks about becoming a Mother and how it can be a vulnerable time in life, the
woman’s sense of self had been taken and has been replaced by a maternal role as
the Mother. Putz images show a rawness, a time of bonding where in this image she
has possibly just had a bath with her baby, see fig 2, she seems to be gazing out of
the window which gives off a feeling of isolation, even more so with the bars across
her window which could make her feel a little trapped. You can tell from the way she
is holding her child that there is a loving nature about her but also a sense of
wonder.

Fig 2
Hanna Putz, Untitled (Nave 3), 2012
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Another photographer that I gave interest to within the book was Ana Casas Broda,
Broda struggled to have children and had to have numerous fertility treatments,
when she did become a Mother it brought back uncomfortable memories of her own
childhood but also pushed her into a therapy by using her photography as an outlet.
This pushed her to heal from the past and transformed her own identity from the
suffering post partum depression into a new healed version of herself. In Fig 3 Broda
seems exhausted, Motherhood is taking a toll on her at this particular time, her Son
is occupied so it looks that she has taken this time to catch some rest, her body
seems tired from the strains of motherhood portraying a whole different identity from
one she may have been previously used too. The lighting is great here creating an
atmosphere with herself and son lit as if the television is shining onto them whilst the
rest of the room and outside the window looking quite dark suggesting that it’s late or
maybe very early morning, I feel that the lighting creates an atmospheric approach
giving deeper meaning to the image.

Fig 3

I have also analyzed an image from Sally Mann (see fig 4), Mann is known for taking
photographs of her family in some of her projects she explores the relationships
within family, Mann’s father allowed her to be a free spirit as a child and this is
apparent in her own work. In this particular image I can see a clear bond between
the Mother and Daughter, the Mother looks tired from pregnancy, the way she has
used the sink to hold her up and looking upwards as if she is taking a moment and
just standing for some time to take a breather. Her Daughter lovingly holding her
Mother with her arms wrapped gently over her neck as if she is saying "don't worry
Mum I’ve got you", and almost looking slightly worried maybe a little fearful about
what her Mother is going to soon intel and a feeling of empathy towards her as if she
can feel to some extent the emotions her Mother may be feeling, she is taking some
of her Mother's emotional weight and putting it onto herself. The daughter's leg
entwinning with her Mother's, locking her foot in, another sign of support. The
Mother's expression seemingly giving off  a sense that her daughter has given her
exactly what she needed in that moment, support and love, emotionally and
physically, already the Mother’s identity seems to be changing within pregnancy.  
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Fig 4
Sally Mann Untitled from the "At Twelve" Series (Page 46). 

In the book Representations Of Motherhood (Bassin,1994) it looks at the Mother as

a subject and also being a person within her own right which to me is saying
although she is a Mother, she is also her own person and has her own identity, this
could be telling the reader that she had lost some what of her identity but also
stressing that she is still someone other than just a parent. Within the book a quote
about Winnicott’s states, “ Winnicott’s abiding interest was in the constitution of
selfhood, and his focus was on what we might now call the two-person situation –
this is how the provision of maternal care facilitates or impedes the emergence of
selfhood in the young child”, this is interesting because Winnicott is stating the
Mother has to adjust to being herself but to also place herself as the child, she is no
longer only thinking about her needs, she now has to take care of another and
become more selfless where as before it was okay to be selfish and independent if
she so wished.
In order for me to resonate more with these changes in identity and bonding, I
wanted to explore the topic not just from a personal perspective but by looking at
another Mother, I had my own experiences but how did others feel about this? I
decided to spend some hours over a few days with a Mother just documenting her
with her Son, trying to grasp their bond and how I felt she was identified. I had taken
my own photograph’s and wanted to take a look deeper into what I was seeing, what
I felt in the present moment but also what the images spoke out to me after I had
taken them.
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Fig 5 Fig 6

Fig 7 Fig 8

Fig 9 Fig 10

Fig 11 Fig 12
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On entering the house I asked (Subject a) if she could just continue her normal day,
almost as if I wasn’t there, I wanted this to be natural so I could grasp something real
and raw, I didn’t want to create photographs that were staged. When I was taking
these images, instantly I was seeing a Mother completely devoted to her child’s
needs, almost all of her time was spent thinking about what he was doing and what
he needed. In these moments I saw her identity as the role of the Mother, someone
so selfless and loving, before he entered her life I imagine her version of self was
something much different. Subject a spent her time fetching her Son drinks (see fig
6) which he decided to spill and spit out on numerous occasions meaning she was
back and forth with the tea towel moping up the mess (see fig 7), this became a
game which both subjects found fun to begin with but more and more milk was going
over the carpet so Mum decided to give some small amounts of discipline. This
suggests as the role of the Mother she had taken on a sense of authority, a person
who has to take charge and action now and again, something she may not of
needed to do before having a child. Their bond was strong, subject a always
reaching out her hand if he was to fall and giving him lots of opportunity for cuddles,
just the was she would look at him at times was so loving, she seemed to embrace
her identity and it seems that if she was to have a loving nature before that
Motherhood could of enhanced this. At one stage subject a got her Son ready for a
nap (see fig 9+10) a daily routine that they had which also gave Mum around an
hour of time to herself, she had made a cup of tea and seemed pleased with this
moment peace and relaxation (see fig 11). This was a time that although of course
she was still Mum, in these few moments she could just be her, maybe these child
nap times gave Mother’s a sense of self back even just for a short period.

Methodology