Jennifer Georgescu
Mother Series
Titles from “Mother Series”
1) Boost
2) Dough
3) Fading Away
4) Milk Veins
5) Thorns
Artist Statement
“Mother Series” is an ongoing, long term project that began in 2015 following the birth of my first son. In our beginning days, I had no time to think, no time to sleep, and I didn’t dream. I began to feel like a shell of a person whose identity had become lost somewhere along the way. My son nursed relentlessly and I spent all day and night staring into his tiny face. I began to think of him as more of an extension of myself than his own separate being, and it was difficult to imagine his thoughts as separate from mine. Using my son and myself as photographic subjects, I began documenting the tenderness of love and dependency, while undergoing a loss and transformation of my former self.
With the birth of my second son, and with continued time, I feel the beginnings of their journeys toward independence. What was once an all-encompassing relationship is overshadowed by individual growth and identity. Their transformations are triumphant and bittersweet and I find myself once again struggling with the loss of a former role.
Drawing inspiration from dramatic, color saturated Baroque paintings and religious iconography; I have created a symbolic language to decipher the ever evolving spiritual landscape between mother and child. Through the documentation of psychological weight and tenderness, my photographs show the push and pull of belonging together, while struggling to be apart. The conceptual performances in front of the camera reference subject / photographer, child, and mother, through moments of emotion that can be referenced, cherished, and analyzed.
Jennifer Georgescu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Basel, Switzerland. Her self-reflective projects focus on language, relationships, mythologies and control. She is a three time finalist for Critical Mass, Photolucida, a recipient of the John Chervinsky Scholarship, through the Griffin Museum of Photography, and a grantee of the William Male Foundation Grant in 2019, and 2020. Recent exhibitions include the Athens Phot Festival, Blue Sky Gallery, Startup Art Fair LA, The Oceanside Museum of Art, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, and Center for Fine Art Photography. Recent publications include FRAMES Magazine, Humble Arts Foundation, Lenscratch, ArtDoc Magazine, Aint Bad, the Missouri Review, Silvershotz, SHUTR magazine, and PHOTO+. www.jengeorgescu.com