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Artist Feature

Every week an artist is featured whose single image was published by Der Greif. The Feature shows the image in the original context of the series.

Amy Woodward - Motherhood Works (Ongoing)

Jan 18, 2023

My practice is largely centered around the experiences of motherhood. What I am seeing unfold is a gestating body of work encompassing 4-5 years of my photographic practice capturing the stories and lives of mothers. Throughout this journey I felt called to explore the magnificence, strength, intimacy and tenderness of the motherhood experience: witnessing the relentlessness, intensity and the contradicting facets of being a mother in a society that overlooks and devalues a role worthy of reverence and representation.

 

As I grew and birthed our second child, I observed how closely my practice is influenced by my own hormonal state and fertility. The later stages of pregnancy gifted a manic expansiveness and energy to create. As I write, the early postpartum stage following the birth of my second child has passed and my cycle has returned – I am starting to move through this familiar, dark terrain of re-emergence where I am engulfed by identity crisis, by grief, by the energy of death and rebirth. The duality of motherhood is a potent and volatile energy, and each rite of passage comes with an invitation to see things differently – through softer or darker eyes. 

 

Witnessing and documenting the universal experiences of motherhood is a long-form body of work. I revisit the mother-child subjects in my photographs, photographing them over time. It is a deep privilege to be invited into sacred and intimate spaces to bring stories of motherhood forward. I expect these narratives to evolve, grow and unfurl in a similar nature to parenthood itself in all of its meandering chaos, messiness and immense beauty.