The Mother and The Photographer – By Ailbíona McLochlainn

Having a child later in life has its benefits.

By the time I met my daughter at the age of 40, I had transformed into a mellow and patient adult, liberated from the angsty inner struggles that defined my earlier decades. I had managed to explore life’s possibilities, to experience romance, to establish myself in a fulfilling career, and – perhaps most importantly – to develop a stable sense of identity.

Photography has always been a big part of that identity. Known locally as ‘that girl who rides a bike with a camera across her back,’ I transitioned seamlessly into ‘that pregnant girl who rides a bike with a camera across her back’ …And granted, the use of the term ‘girl’ here is amusing. But such is the local parlance, that even 80-year-olds are referred to as  ‘girls’ and ‘boys’, so I shall leave the semantics of this aside for now!

We live in a close-knit rural community. When seeing me on the road, people would often stop to chat and ask how I was keeping. As part of the usual small talk, they would inevitably point to my midsection and exclaim: ‘I bet that will be The Most Photographed Baby in the World!’

While I didn’t venture quite that far into hyperbole, admittedly I harboured grand photographic aspirations toward my future offspring. Instead of browsing through catalogues of prams and high chairs, I pored over photos by Sally Mann, Gertrude Käsebier, and Julia Margaret Cameron. Instead of daydreaming about nursery decor, I inspected our house for suitably photogenic locations to set up backdrops for the glorious, cherubic scenes of infanthood I would capture – followed later by the equally evocative scenes of  fierce toddler-esque determination…

My daughter turned two and a half this month, and she is indeed a thoroughly photographed child.  Just like any other new parents these days, my husband and I have amassed a hard drive’s worth of phone images documenting her many adventures. To a  lesser extent, we also have some ‘real’ camera shots captured digitally and on film. The pictures are numerous, fun, and deeply special to our family. They are also photographically unremarkable. Few, if any, are Photographs of the type I had envisioned taking of my daughter – images which stand up on their own merit as photos and reflect the qualities I strive for in my work. It is as if as soon as I point a camera at my child, all my artistic vision, imagination and skill deteriorate.

I am not generally prone to feelings of guilt when it comes to motherhood. When unable to produce enough breastmilk, I supplemented with formula. I abandoned my intent to baby-cary when my back proved not up to the task. When my daughter was one and a half, I enrolled her in daycare in order to work longer hours. None of these actions made me feel like a bad mother. But, oddly, I feel as if I have failed by not managing to capture my child photographically in the manner I’d hoped to. I have taken striking and noteworthy portraits of other people – including strangers – since my daughter was born; so it isn’t as if I have lost my touch. Why, then, have I been so profoundly inept at photographing her?

At the start of this year I decided to explore this predicament. I set a task for myself to photograph my daughter in a way that would yield creatively satisfying results. I approached the situation with the same rational determination, as I would with a work-related project – first reviewing my images to identify what exactly was wrong.

It was clear that some of the difficulties were technical. While using manual-focus equipment never posed a problem for me previously, with a creature who never kept still things became more challenging. My ratio of in-focus vs out-of-focus images was uncharacteristically low.

Lighting and composition were also problematic. Because my daughter refused  to remain where I placed her, or to keep her face turned in the direction of the light, I found it next to impossible to light her in the manner I wanted or even to decently compose the shot. I could set the scene as picturesquely as I liked, but in the time it took me to adjust the focus and release the shutter, she would be in a different location and pose entirely. Chasing her around the house or garden with a camera whilst adjusting the settings back and forth manically has provided me with many a workout!

Although the world of babies and children was entirely foreign to me until I had my daughter, I did  know well enough to understand  she was not a doll and could not be expected to behave like one. So I don’t mean to imply that I expected her to pose for formal portraits or tableaux images! What I mean is, that even in natural uncontrived settings, she moved faster and more unpredictably than what my skills could handle. In the past, I have photographed both weddings and bicycle races using all-manual equipment with no issues. But capturing a  my daughter proved more challenging!

There were two possible solutions to this, I figured: I could either cave in, use my camera’s auto-settings and buy an auto-focus lens. Or, I could make a concerted effort to practice and improve my reaction times and the speed of my visual decision-making.  I decided to do the latter. Remarkably, after only a month of a self-imposed phone ban {meaning, I was only allowed to photograph my daughter with a ‘proper’ camera and not with my phone}, the technical issues improved.

But ironically, improving my technique made me realise that the real problem was more fundamental. At its core, my approach to portraiture did not fit with my daughter’s personality and demeanour. There is a certain Expressive Stillness I strive for in the portraits I take, and it is the quest for this quality that drives my work. To achieve it, I need to establish a degree of non-verbal rapport with the subject,  to frame the scene in a particular manner, and to control the setting. These elements characterise my photos regardless of whether they are posed studio portraits, or  spontaneous shots taken in a natural setting. Even my candid street photos tend to look like tableaus, so tightly and carefully I manage them.

With her feral  rambunctious ways, my daughter is simply not compatible with this style of capture. She does not ‘do’ stillness. Even as an infant, she was perpetually animated, mischievous, prone to comically expressive gestures and clownish facial expressions. She also makes a tornado of a mess with impressive swiftness wherever she goes, so  ‘controlling the set’ is next to impossible.  No sooner is a beautifully lit backdrop erected, then it is covered with bits of shredded napkin, and perhaps some regurgitated pancake. Items of clothing are removed. Monkeyish faces are pulled. And manic thrashing ensues, to accompany a badly corrupted rendition of the Baby Shark theme song.

I consulted with an acquaintance who specialises in child photography. She assured me that my frustrations were not unique. In fact, many of her clients are themselves photographers, who struggle with photographing their own children. She suggested some tips and tricks used  to ‘wrangle’  young children, and I set out to implement her advice. I bribed my daughter with biscuits into sitting still and sweetly holding a toy train – when what she really wanted to do was run amok and rip up the packaging. I also tried the trick of setting her across from a screen playing cartoons at camera level, so that she would appear to be looking with interest at the camera when the photo was being taken.

Technically, these methods did work – in the sense that, for the duration of time it took her to munch the biscuit and/or get bored of Peppa Pig’s antics, she stayed still allowing me to photograph her in the manner I wanted and with the composition I had in mind. But the resulting photos looked ‘off’ and for all the effort that went into them, they did not feel artistically successful. There was a sad cynical falseness, I felt, in luring my child into a pose that wasn’t natural to her. 

It finally dawned on me, that all along I was trying to get my daughter to behave in accordance with what I wanted to photograph. Whereas perhaps what I should be doing, is accepting her own terms and changing my style to accommodate.

I began to notice another phenomenon at play in my efforts to photograph my daughter.

In the act of taking photos, I switch into a special mode of thinking, feeling, and relating to the person in front of the camera. And that mode feels incompatible with being a mother. So to treat my daughter as a photographic subject – to study and approach her in a manner guided by aesthetic considerations – feels almost painfully at odds with the very different,  protective, visceral and hyper-empathetic, way I would normally relate to her.

I suppose that when I take a snapshot with my phone, it is such a casual, incidental act; I hardly even look at what I am snapping and that allows me to stay if not entirely engaged then at least more engaged.  But a ‘real’ camera literally gets between us; it forms a physical barrier. I am not engaged with my daughter when I photograph her. I am engaged with the camera, and in that sense I separate myself from her in a way that feels physiologically wrong. I see her little face show signs of disappointment and loneliness when the camera appears; she wants to play with me, she wants my attention without an intermediary, she wants me to find her more captivating than a black {well, sometimes black and chrome} box. It is all very subtle, but it is there. And when I notice it, my heart breaks and I put the camera away. I am her mother, and no picture is worth this.

As part of this experience I have come face to face with some unexpected realisations – about my child, about our relationship, and about my relationship with photography.

In the past, I always thought the camera helped me relate to people. But now I have come to question this. Perhaps more likely, I use the camera so that I can appear to relate to people, while in fact not only keeping my distance, but creating an effective barrier between myself and others. In not allowing me to treat her this way and imploring me to be her mother instead, my daughter has made me aware of this fact.

Can I be both a mother, and a photographer, to the full extent of what each of those concepts entail? I do not have the answer. But I am working on evolving my method – toward something that works for both of us, not just for me. I am also working on myself, to redefine what I consider a successful portrait of my daughter. This involves relinquishing my preconceived notions of what photographing childhood entails, and welcoming the development of our own unique visual language.

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NOTES

All images shown here taken with a digital Leica CL and the following lenses –
header image: Nikkor 50mm f1.2
second and 5th image: Leica Summicron-C 40mm f2
3rd, 4th & 6th image: Leica Summarit 75mm f2.4

Two noteworthy compilations, for anyone interested in photographers whose subjectmatter is their own children:
In Their Mothers’ Eyes: Women Photographers and Their Children, by Martina Mettner
Photographing Childhood: The Image and the Memory, by LaNola Stone

Ailbíona McLochlainn is a photographer, knitwear designer, and recovering academic, based in Ireland. For additional information and lots of pictures to look at, visit www.ailbiona.com

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