Varia – kontynuacje – antycypacje: O matce jako tożsamej, o matce jako innej. Analiza odmiennych taktyk reprezentacji fotograficznych aktów matek
Varia – follow-ups and anticipations: Mother as the Same, Mother as the Other. The Analysis of Different Photography Tactics of Mothers’ Nude Representations

Summary/Abstract: The text is an interpretation of three photography projects made by Terry Richardson, Melanie Manchot and Evergon. The subject of the analysis is a relation between a parent and an adult child, who is at the same time an artist. All of the photographers asked their mothers to take part in their projects concerning nakedness. This transgression of the cultural taboo seems to be both an important sign and an identity question. The article is based on ideas of Michel de Certeau and Paul Ricoeur, who point at relations between closeness and alienation. The artists construct, de-construct, and re-construct the history of family and the rules of family life, but also they query the role of an individual human being in a society. The term “tactic” is used here in de Certeau’s understanding of this word. It means that tactic is an individual form of using already existing institutions, traditions or practices in a more personal or communal sense. Artistic practices are ways of parasitising on mainstream culture strategies or psychological/psychoanalytical mechanisms. Tactics are like games; however, game is not just postmodern play but also an area of discussing problems of relations between objectivity, freedom, and attitude towards mother as the very specific Other – the Other who has already been in a very specific symbiotic relation with her child.

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