MOTHER’S KEEPER

The ice is giving way. Dens are stirring and emptying. The earth is abuzz with birth. It is a perfect time for Mother, a new exhibition and book, both featuring the latest photography series from acclaimed photographer Elinor Carucci.

Carucci takes photos that get intimate with every person who stops to look at them. The viewer is so close, feeling the warmth radiate off skin, gauging the depth of the subjects’ breath.

The Mother series is closer still, when you understand that you are diving deep inside the personal lives of Carucci, her children, her husband, and her parents -- to places most other people keep especially private. Carucci lives passionately out loud -- in full view.

The series begins towards the end of Carucci’s pregnancy, her belly beyond full -- with twins. She faces motherhood with aplomb. And with art.

She softens at the prospect of becoming a mother, while fervently holding on to her own individuality, and reclines, like a ripe Salome, sculpted by the light and the touch of her husband’s hand.

"I felt and saw so much in those first months—the beauty and ugliness, the tears and laughter, the extremes you come to know when you’re a new parent. I tried somehow to deal with it all through my camera, hoping to portray the complexity of motherhood as honestly as I could," Carucci explains.

Turning the pages of Mother, you will come to participate in the childhood of Eden and Emmanuelle, Carucci’s twins, as they grow up through age 9. You will feel moments of what it might be like to be their mother. That’s the power of what Carucci shares with you.

The images seem both candid and considered. In fact, they are kind of both true. Carucci sometimes sets up cameras so that they are ready to capture whatever unstaged actions are transpiring.

She finds beauty in the ordinary. She finds beauty in the parts of our humanity that we’d rather not see. She finds beauty in sights that might make us cringe. And, perhaps most importantly, she is able, through her lens, to capture and deliver beauty in the spirit of both motherhood and childhood, in a range of raw essences and luxurious complexities.

Elinor Carucci was born in 1971 in Jerusalem, Israel, and moved to New York City in 1995.

Carucci's solo shows include the Edwynn Houk Gallery (New York), the Sasha Wolf Gallery (New York), and Gagosian Gallery (London), and her group shows include The Museum of Modern Art (New York) and The Photographers' Gallery (London).

Her photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Brooklyn Museum, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews, and The New York Times Magazine.

Carucci was awarded the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for Young Photographers in 2001, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2012. Carucci has published two monographs, Closer (2002) and Diary of a Dancer (2005).

Carucci currently teaches at the graduate program of the School of Visual Arts.

The newest monograph, Mother, published by Prestel/Random House, with a Foreward written by Francine Prose, was on the New York Times list of 10 Best Photo Books of the Year, and on the Los Angeles Times Photo Book Roundup of the 5 Best Photography Books of 2013.

Carucci’s exibition of photos from the Mother series is on at the Edwynn Houk Gallery (New York), 03.27.14 - 05.03.14.Photo: Courtesy of Prestel. Mother, by Elinor Carucci. (Prestel, 2013)

Read more about Beautiful Spring, it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Beautiful Spring Things Books, Beautiful New Life Emerging Now, and The Most Beautiful Eggs Right Now, Emerging Talents Now, and Brightest Lights. Biggest Sky.

Enter this week’s BN Photo Competition. Our theme this week is Beautiful Spring Things. Deadline is 03.23.14.

Photo Credits: 

1. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. "The Woman That I Still Am #2, 2010."
2. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “Feeling me, 2004.”
3. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. "Trying to Protect Emmanuelle, 2005."
4. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. "Love, 2009."
5. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “Bath, 2006.”
6. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “Thirty-Eight Years Old, 2009.”
7. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “A doll in a box, 2010.”
8. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “Mother, 2012.”
9. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. "Why can’t you be nicer to your brother? 2012.”
10. Photo: by Elinor Carucci. Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. “Emmanuelle having her hair cut, 2007."
11. Photo: Courtesy of Nature.com. Eggs.