The documentary of Tierney Gearon was definitely entertaining. I found myself drawn to the eccentricities of her and her family, the way anyone’s unique story is interesting because it’s not my own. I love the way she connects with her children and her mother through photography, the way they cooperate as models in her images. I imagine that I will be somewhat like Gearon as I find myself in the dawn of that phase of life where family begins to take a central role again. I imagine that my husband and children, parents, siblings and in-laws will be the subjects of much of my future work. Her photography reads like a journal. It’s a way of recording her surroundings, the people she loves, the places they go, the things she finds striking, inspiring or meaningful. I love the way she sees art in her life, even in the darkness of her mother’s illness. The thing I find a bit distracting about her photography is the frequent nudity and its seemingly insignificant contribution to the frame. In some situations I see the beauty of it, but others, such as the photograph “Untitled, 2006” in The Mother Project gallery of a woman (maybe herself?) bending over in front of a house…I just don’t see a deeper meaning or significance to the nude. I feel like nudity should serve some sort of purpose in art, and in hers it often seems inconsequential to the bigger picture. I don’t see a problem, as many critics do, in the photographing of her children without clothes. I might not submit these images to a gallery if they were of my own children, but I certainly don’t consider them pornography.
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