AI LOF JOE

I cannot remember the last time I told my mother ‘I love you’, while my daughter repeats these words endlessly. Why is it that I no longer say to my mother what is so vital for us both?

Now that I have become a mother myself and my daughter clings to me with such intensity—sometimes to the point of intrusion—I find myself reflecting on the psychology of the mother–daughter bond. Her insistence on closeness becomes a mirror through which I revisit my own relationship with my mother, tracing cycles of rebellion, separation and independence as if scripted by psychological texts.

At the same time I am acutely aware that my daughter’s overflowing, sometimes obsessive love will not last forever. Inevitably, it will loosen and I will long for the very attachment that now feels excessive.

This project is my attempt to hold and transform these emotions—toward both my daughter and my mother—through objects, texts, photographs and fragile remnants of memory. Cyanotype offers itself as an ideal medium: an alternative photographic process in which I can weave together tangible keepsakes, lived emotions and the intangible values of our intergenerational ties.

I am grateful to my daughter: through her devotion I gain a deeper understanding and a reimagining of my own connection to my mother.

Materials for cyanotype. Family photo archives spanning from 1956 to the present (mine, my mother’s, my grandmother’s); a 1987 Russian language textbook; a daisy; a pancake, baked following my mother’s recipe; a Didymos baby sling with a Indio pattern; handmade gifts from my daughter, including a ceramic tile and a Mother’s Day card.

Each caption reveals the year the photograph was taken, the negative of which became the source for the cyanotype.