These images are a response–part intuitive, part deliberate–to a time when the scaffolding of my life seemed to disappear. I assumed that I’d reemerge on the other side of motherhood the same woman, but it felt like suddenly the Rachel I’d been before becoming a parent was irrelevant, gone. I experienced this as a loss, and grieving it raised questions. Who had I become? Which parts of my old self were best left behind?
I was drawn to early the Victorian practice of making memento mori using hair. Art, sculpture, even mementos of the time consistently used tresses of hair to honor both the dead and the living. In my work, I use that idea as a tool for self-reflection. These tintypes are part of an ongoing series of “Hair Portraits” made to honor the parts of myself I have outgrown and those I want to foster. They explore the nuanced transitions in female identity related to motherhood, aging, and choice.
As I engaged with this new mode, my models became conduits of self-reflection–a way to look at the confines of my chosen female role from the outside. And there I observed a post-maternal kind of strength wholly different from the role I’d inhabited before motherhood. Looking at them now, these images on the wall, photographs of elaborate hair sculptures constructed in my studio to change. Parts of myself I choose to leave behind. Others I bring with me.
