CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/12/2013

Home Truths

Featured image, "Untitled (Groh 3)," 2012, by Hannah Putz, is reproduced from Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood, the catalogto curator Susan Bright's challenging traveling exhibition currently on view at the Photographers' Gallery, London. Bright writes, "the mothers represented here are resolutely subject rather than object. They are neither idealized nor marginalized. The work in this book is at times subtle, at times bold. Highly subjective, it can also be contradictory. It displays a sense of seriousness and intense reflection, often with a haunting quality. It has the ability to move, but also to question and disrupt assumptions about power, gender, domesticity and the body without being judgmental. Like photography itself, the expectations and demands of motherhood are in flux; both subject and medium grapple for new meaning in a changing world. My hope is that the work featured here will open up debates about the continued representation and place of the mother figure, while raising questions about the identity and display of photography at this pivotal moment in which we find ourselves—at a crossroads between the singular photographic object and the sprawling networked image." Bright will sign copies of the book Friday, November 15 at the International Center of Photography, New York.