Mother

In Mother, I use a broken underwater camera to explore the maternal bond. The ocean's corrosive marks on the film become a visceral metaphor for the profound, messy struggle of losing myself as a woman to make space for my daughter.

In Mother, an underwater analog series, the maternal bond is explored as an intimate archipelago: two distinct individuals, islands of self, navigating the vast, fluid space that both separates and connects them. Working alongside my daughter, the project observes the unspoken transfer of legacy within the ocean. Here, the water functions as the medium of our coexistence: fiercely protective yet utterly consuming, constantly challenging the boundaries of individual identity.

Parallel to this familial ecosystem is the inheritance of the photographic frame. Shot on a reclaimed, broken Nikonos II, a camera model pioneered by Jacques Cousteau, the series confronts a foundational way of looking. This camera popularised an idealised, objective gaze that historically shaped how humanity viewed the natural world, turning "othered" subjects into isolated cultural islands to be categorised and consumed.

Mother consciously dismantles this worldview. By embracing the camera’s mechanical flaws, chaotic light leaks, and the ocean's corrosive marks on the film, this traditional gaze is fractured. I allow the water to physically alter the boundaries of the image. The resulting degradation of the negatives becomes a visceral metaphor for the unspoken crisis of mothering: the quiet, disorienting process of "unbecoming," where my own identity fragments to make space for hers.

By surrendering to this visual and psychological fragmentation, the series embraces crisis as a necessary evolution. It unsettles the historical frame, proposing a feminine perspective grounded in empathy. Mother asks what new models of coexistence, intimacy, and connection can emerge when rigid, objective boundaries are finally washed away.