Description:
Photographer Jim Erickson was raised primarily by his father, and like many motherless children, strives for the comfort and intense bond of female nurturing. After the birth of his own child, Erickson was compelled towards a three-year photographic investigation into the essence of the maternal figure. His intense project starts off with the revealing words of C.G. Jung; "...the mother-symbol points to a darker background which eludes conceptual formulation and can only be vaguely apprehended as the hidden, nature-bound life of the body ... it can be grasped only at the farthest reach of intuition, and then very dimly. That is why it needs symbols." Erickson has channeled his personal desires, fascinations, unanswered questions, and ultimately symbolic visions into this book, Mother. From a fantastical portrait of a woman drawn across the ocean by drawings of dolphins, to the realistic portrait of a teenage mother and baby in the halls of high school, Erickson has created a diverse pictorial reverie of the mother figure. While the motif of each photograph may differ, the women all appear strong and proud; a mother envisioned as a glowing heavenly body with toga-clad baby in her arms, sweet and serene portraits of mothers breast-feeding, cowboy families, a gathering of Peruvian women. Moving from dreamy to gritty, Mother is an intensely personal journey that hits upon a collectively potent subject for all. --J.P. Cohen
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