#wouldyoulookatthatmother
A book of black and white photographs (with perforated leaves)
Concept Stage

In a sleep-deprived world of flashing, primary coloured plastic, and relatives grumbling about not having seen enough photos of a baby recently, it’s all too easy for parents to lose track of who they really are. With no intention of being disrespectful towards her adored children, after having her second child Sarah began to feel her sense of identity ebb away, but within her a fierce sense that she was ‘more than just a mother’.

About 15 years before having her first child she’d graduated with a First Class (hons) degree in Fine Art from Winchester School of Art. Sarah’s art practice went on the back burner as her career went off in a curatorial direction. She had a dream that she’d (re)launch her fine art practice with gusto ‘when the child sleeps’… only her babies weren’t that keen on sleep! So, when an ex-colleague, (Graham, previously of Ikon Gallery, Birmingham where she’d worked at the very beginning of her professional career) invited Sarah to participate in a Black and White Photo Challenge on Facebook (uploading one black and white photo per day for seven days, no people, no captions, challenge a friend to join the fun each day), she jumped at the opportunity to photograph other than her adored, technicoloured off-spring.

Like many mums, Sarah found that her phone’s always within arms reach (generally switched to silent – never wake a sleeping baby! Oh, the irony!), so taking photos on her phone was one thing she could do to exercise her personal creative drive and find the person beneath the mother.

“I started off taking seven photos on consecutive days, passed fourteen, and by twenty I’d resolved to create a book of photos charting a year. Some parents bake, other parents jog, I started photographing in earnest (some of them have artistic merit, some of them are pretty poor, which I’m fine with as it kinda reflects the “winning at/really not winning at” everyday existence of parenthood, and the relentless pressure to perform). The exercise has given me a new focus that’s easily managed alongside parenting, it’s made me look and consider my surroundings in a more analytical fashion than I would otherwise, and it has given me hope that I might be able to give something back to the causes that had really helped me at the beginning of  my parenting journey.”

Sarah set up an Instagram page (now deleted) to track the progress of the project, @wouldyoulookatthatmother

“Life as a new mother to my first born was pretty tough for various reasons, and those around me saw my Post Natal Post Traumatic Stress turn into Post Natal Depression. LLL (La Leche League International, a non-governmental, nonprofit organisation that organises advocacy, educational, and training related to breast feeding) and NCT (The National Childbirth Trust, a UK-based charity that offers information and support in pregnancy, childbirth and early parenthood) both helped me dig my way out of the very dark, deep and unsettling hole that I’d found myself adrift in. After having got back on track, and finding my groove I realised that I wanted to do something to help and increase awareness of these two invaluable charities, but it wasn’t until I had a second babe in arms that I figured out what.

Having become a parent whilst living in a tiny shoe-box of a house, I realised how many new parents, in a panic-stricken state, up and move to homes with more space shortly after becoming parents. If I could create a book with a percentage of proceeds going to these two charities, a book with perforated leaves that enabled people to pull out plates, and fill their walls with interesting images at relatively low cost, I could help families on several levels, whilst helping my own.

The working title of the book is #wouldyoulookatthatmother a play on words to echo the unhelpful maternal finger pointing habit, and the often fragile state of minds of sleep-deprived mothers who struggle to see a world beyond their littlies.”

Sarah couldn’t finance the publication of books herself, but had the idea that she might explore the possibility of crowdfunding the project if enough people liked the idea. As with so many ideas, the time pressures of family life got the better of this project, which has now been laid to rest.

Here’s a selection of some of the photos that were taken during this year.