Catalogue: Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood

Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood is a book and two exhibitions spread over two London sites (The Photographers’ Gallery and The Foundling Museum, to 5 January 2014).

Each exhibition responds to the site. At the Photographers’ Gallery the photographs have a somewhat excessive nature (to echo the current changes in content and approaches to photography), and at the Foundling Museum the works chime with the implicit loss that infuses the collection and the museum itself.

The book is just a book. It is not a catalogue. It was always going to stand-alone from the exhibitions and work holistically around the subject matter. In order to do this it features work not shown in the exhibitions and I commissioned essays covering a wide range of approaches to the subject of the representations of mothers.

Representations

In my essay I trace the history of photographs of motherhood from the 19th century to now. Art historian Simon Watney weaves a narrative of the Madonna figure through the centuries.

Journalist Nick Johnstone looks at the presentation of the mother from the perspective of the father, and considers how images of fatherhood compare, while curator Stephanie Chapman lays out the moving history of London’s Foundling Museum and repositions the mother in a story of loss where she is strangely absent.

The book was designed by O-SB Design, and each of the artists’ plates are handled specifically to suit the images. There is a mixture of video stills, text and images that only work when juxtaposed against others – so it had to be sensitively done, and I can imagine it was challenging to see it as a whole during the design process. The result is very dynamic shifts as you work through the book.

Placing images

The essays are laced between the plates. This was an important decision as we wanted them to relate to the works and not be clumped together at the back or the front as is traditionally done in exhibition catalogues.

This is the third book I have worked on with the publisher Andrew Brown, owner of Art/Books. We have a very good relationship and our expectations for books are high.

It was the first time that I have edited a book and commissioned writers. This was something I enjoyed. It allowed a space to expand on themes, histories and nuances that may not be immediately accessible, apparent or appropriate to show in an exhibition.

Working on a book and curating exhibitions are very different processes. For me, however, it’s hard to visualise not doing one without the other.

Susan Bright is the curator of Home Truths