The photo shoot for “Matron” took place in the fall of 2023. We wrapped our pregnant model in butcher’s twine. The final proof was not completed until the summer of 2024. Our creative process is one of gestation. It usually takes about nine months from the time of “conception” until the piece has a life of its own.  Even though we work in digital photography, our iterative process of finding the image through multiple edits of consecutive negatives and prints is more reminiscent of the lengthy process of drawing or painting than traditional photography. Working in Cyanotype, it is quite difficult to control the final outcome; this leaves room for surprise encounters.

This piece tries to get at the sense of the lack of the physical aspect of maternity — the inability to nurse or take on the traditional physiological role that a mother has for her baby. The repetition in our printing method reflects the cyclical nature of grief. Longing for what can never be becomes an almost tactile caress of painful imagined images, similar to the Cyanotype process of rhythmically agitating a print in multiple baths. The monochromatic nature Cyanotype lends itself to the melancholy of the yearning ache that this piece reaches for. 

We laughed a lot making this piece. It felt like a valid way to dissipate a lot of the fears we have had about being crushed by the cultural construct of motherhood. Although we begin with digital images, we choose to relinquish the control that the digital typically confers by embracing the limitations and variables of the analog cyanotype process. This enables moments of surprise and creative encounter. The choice to see those limitations as enhancing rather than frustrating the creative process challenges the exploitative lens of “overcoming” through which the limits of our bodies and our planet are so often viewed.

This piece evokes a feminist power that embraces the vulnerability of motherhood while rejecting the narrative of fragility. We come to our creative practice from the vantage point of navigating disability and chronic illness. Built into our rhythm of making  is the choice to embrace our physical limitations and vulnerabilities and to see them as places for powerful meaning making not as liabilities. Because of this we are often at odds with the frenetic pace of the art world but we have confidence that our slow steady method of honoring our bodies is a place of fruitfulness for both art making and motherhood. 

This piece has evoked many varied interpretations. It is the first time that we placed two full figures in relation to each other, which brings a new type of tension to the field of blue created in the Cyanotype process. The photoshoot for this image happened during a very vulnerable time for both models and that really comes through. No babies were harmed in the making of this image.

The reduction of womanhood to the reproductive organs affects all women, cis or trans, straight or gay, those who have given birth and those who have not or cannot. Working with digital photography enables us to explore the human figure without the strain that drawing and painting place upon the artist’s body. We use cyanotype—a 170-year-old non-toxic photographic printing process—because of the visceral physicality of the experience.

The placenta is a large living organ that evolved to be a mediator between the physical needs of two intertwined bodies. Our authoritarian individualistic culture frequently frames questions of human vulnerability in zero sum terms. We see this beautiful bloody organ as a much needed living metaphor for our time. Human limitation does not necessitate a struggle over who’s needs will be prioritized first. Instead, human need and vulnerability are the seeds from which meaning and connection can grow.

The placenta is a large living organ that evolved to be a mediator between the physical needs of two intertwined bodies. Our authoritarian individualistic culture frequently frames questions of human vulnerability in zero sum terms. We see this beautiful bloody organ as a much needed living metaphor for our time. Human limitation does not necessitate a struggle over who’s needs will be prioritized first. Instead, human need and vulnerability are the seeds from which meaning and connection can grow.

We originally saw “Theia & The Moon” and “Flaescmangre” as the two sides of the same coin. On one side there is the deification of the idealized woman, the matron, the glowing mother. The direct result of this idealized goddess is the other side of the coin— the lens that reduces women’s personhood to this role butchers their bodies.  Women become meat sacrificed to the idealized goddess. 

We originally saw “Theia & The Moon” and “Flaescmangre” as the two sides of the same coin. On one side there is the deification of the idealized woman, the matron, the glowing mother. The direct result of this idealized goddess is the other side of the coin— the lens that reduces women’s personhood to this role butchers their bodies.  Women become meat sacrificed to the idealized goddess.