view20 December 2024
Exhibition text from No Smiling, a show of my mother's photography curated by me and my sister Tessa at West End in Los Angeles December 20-22, 2024:
Growing up in front of my mom’s camera, I was trained early to obey her lone photographic directive: “no smiling.”
I have more than a few memories of watching first-time subjects react with visible discomfort to this rule. But after a lifetime of confronting her lens, I’ve come to understand its function as a mnemonic portal to an ethos grounded in uncompromising empathy.
What it really holds is a desire to portray unfiltered truths in and of individual people. To lift whatever veil stands between her subjects and their ability to let their insides out. Look at enough of my mom’s images and you’ll start to notice how often she shoots from their perspectives; she’s on the ground with infants learning to crawl, meeting animal gazes on all fours, or crouching into a child’s eyes.
It’s this merging instinct that allows her to dissolve walls (and conjure the kinds of smiles she authorizes, which are the ones that can’t be helped). In her pictures we witness first kisses and changing bodies in bathroom mirrors. Bare pregnant bellies and secrets in playground crannies. Private naps and baby butts. The distinction between domestic and public blurs—she inspires intimacy naturally.
Like any kid blindly craving autonomy, I went through a period of time where I reacted to this impulse with embarrassment. I think my siblings felt similarly. I didn’t understand why she couldn’t leave us or anyone else alone. Why an awkward Halloween costume or mid-shift cigarette or good light on a face just had to be captured.
That our family became a small army of artists is proof enough that we all eventually understood. But what struck me after spending time with the totality of her work, (thanks to my sister Tessa, who led the charge through decades of negatives when we decided to produce this show together), was the way it reflected her selfless approach to motherhood.
Because a mother knows that it’s messy business when we’re launched into a world of endless choices and find ourselves fumbling around in the dark for our identities. How clothes and haircuts and hobbies don’t fit. How lovers and friends come and go. A mother recognizes that lives are sculpted from these sputtering moments and, very often at her own expense, teaches us that we are not alone in them. That they are not only worth remembering, but celebrating. How radically this empowers a young mind to see life as a gift is immeasurable. That is love.
So No Smiling, then, is a product of love. It’s a gesture of gratitude for our mom’s unifying vision and total sacrifice. For her fierce devotion to creating and forever preserving space for us to learn; to be ourselves, to be of service, to be together.