The Hidden Mother
by Linda Fregni Nagler
Photographs: Linda Fregni Nagler
Text: Massimiliano Gioni, Geoffrey Batchen and a conversation between Francesco Zanot and Linda Fregni Nagler
Publisher: MACK Books Co-published with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
432 pages
Pictures: 1002 colour plates
Year: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-907946-53-0
Comments: 23.8 cm x 28.6 cm, softcover with a die cut dustjacket
In the vein of Francis Alÿs’s Fabiola and Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, Linda Fregni Nagler has collected seemingly nondescript images and accumulated a meaningful archive, thereby giving them a renewed purpose and intensity.
The Hidden Mother is comprised of 1,002 photographs (from daguerreotypes and tintypes to cartes de visite and cabinet cards), all examples of a now redundant practice: to cloak or hide a parent within the background of a child’s portrait, a common procedure from the advent of photography up until the 1920s, when exposure times were relative slow, and a hidden parent was required to hold the child still.
These hidden mothers can be discerned in the background of every one of these portraits – looming behind their children, swaddled in blankets, carpets and brocades as they support their progeny as the central subject. The iterations vary, and in some instances the hidden mother is revealed as a single hand, while in others the child is seated on a shrouded figure, or the parent is quite literally hiding – ensuring that the child’s identity is transposed over their own.
The images hold a certain degree of comedy – albeit unintentional – because the viewer is asked to suspend their disbelief, to ‘not see’ the hidden figure. Some contemporary onlookers would have simply not seen the portrait’s hidden mother, indicative of the cultural nature of the act of seeing. For other viewers, the hidden figure was an essential part of the picture: high infant mortality rates meant that posthumous portraits were the norm, and thus the hidden mother would signify to the viewer that this child was alive.
Creating and defining a sub-genre of photography, Fregni Nagler has accumulated images that repeat a particular gesture – the negation of the parent in the interest of the legibility of the child. The many themes bubbling under the surface of her collection are unified by the singular principle of effacement – as if this gesture speaks of the nature of parenthood itself, or of women’s place in a patriarchal society, where she is figured without an identity of her own.
The collection also confronts the inevitable self-effacing nature of the photographer and the collector. The artist herself seems to hover over these images like a mother – conserving and safeguarding these photographs; as collector, presenter and curator of the collection, Fregni Nagler herself becomes another hidden mother.
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The Hidden Mother
by Linda Fregni Nagler
Photographs: Linda Fregni Nagler
Text: Massimiliano Gioni, Geoffrey Batchen and a conversation between Francesco Zanot and Linda Fregni Nagler
Publisher: MACK Books Co-published with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
432 pages
Pictures: 1002 colour plates
Year: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-907946-53-0
Comments: 23.8 cm x 28.6 cm, softcover with a die cut dustjacket
In the vein of Francis Alÿs’s Fabiola and Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, Linda Fregni Nagler has collected seemingly nondescript images and accumulated a meaningful archive, thereby giving them a renewed purpose and intensity.
The Hidden Mother is comprised of 1,002 photographs (from daguerreotypes and tintypes to cartes de visite and cabinet cards), all examples of a now redundant practice: to cloak or hide a parent within the background of a child’s portrait, a common procedure from the advent of photography up until the 1920s, when exposure times were relative slow, and a hidden parent was required to hold the child still.
These hidden mothers can be discerned in the background of every one of these portraits – looming behind their children, swaddled in blankets, carpets and brocades as they support their progeny as the central subject. The iterations vary, and in some instances the hidden mother is revealed as a single hand, while in others the child is seated on a shrouded figure, or the parent is quite literally hiding – ensuring that the child’s identity is transposed over their own.
The images hold a certain degree of comedy – albeit unintentional – because the viewer is asked to suspend their disbelief, to ‘not see’ the hidden figure. Some contemporary onlookers would have simply not seen the portrait’s hidden mother, indicative of the cultural nature of the act of seeing. For other viewers, the hidden figure was an essential part of the picture: high infant mortality rates meant that posthumous portraits were the norm, and thus the hidden mother would signify to the viewer that this child was alive.
Creating and defining a sub-genre of photography, Fregni Nagler has accumulated images that repeat a particular gesture – the negation of the parent in the interest of the legibility of the child. The many themes bubbling under the surface of her collection are unified by the singular principle of effacement – as if this gesture speaks of the nature of parenthood itself, or of women’s place in a patriarchal society, where she is figured without an identity of her own.
The collection also confronts the inevitable self-effacing nature of the photographer and the collector. The artist herself seems to hover over these images like a mother – conserving and safeguarding these photographs; as collector, presenter and curator of the collection, Fregni Nagler herself becomes another hidden mother.
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The Hidden Mother
by Linda Fregni Nagler
Photographs: Linda Fregni Nagler
Text: Massimiliano Gioni, Geoffrey Batchen and a conversation between Francesco Zanot and Linda Fregni Nagler
Publisher: MACK Books Co-published with the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco
432 pages
Pictures: 1002 colour plates
Year: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-907946-53-0
Comments: 23.8 cm x 28.6 cm, softcover with a die cut dustjacket
In the vein of Francis Alÿs’s Fabiola and Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, Linda Fregni Nagler has collected seemingly nondescript images and accumulated a meaningful archive, thereby giving them a renewed purpose and intensity.
The Hidden Mother is comprised of 1,002 photographs (from daguerreotypes and tintypes to cartes de visite and cabinet cards), all examples of a now redundant practice: to cloak or hide a parent within the background of a child’s portrait, a common procedure from the advent of photography up until the 1920s, when exposure times were relative slow, and a hidden parent was required to hold the child still.
These hidden mothers can be discerned in the background of every one of these portraits – looming behind their children, swaddled in blankets, carpets and brocades as they support their progeny as the central subject. The iterations vary, and in some instances the hidden mother is revealed as a single hand, while in others the child is seated on a shrouded figure, or the parent is quite literally hiding – ensuring that the child’s identity is transposed over their own.
The images hold a certain degree of comedy – albeit unintentional – because the viewer is asked to suspend their disbelief, to ‘not see’ the hidden figure. Some contemporary onlookers would have simply not seen the portrait’s hidden mother, indicative of the cultural nature of the act of seeing. For other viewers, the hidden figure was an essential part of the picture: high infant mortality rates meant that posthumous portraits were the norm, and thus the hidden mother would signify to the viewer that this child was alive.
Creating and defining a sub-genre of photography, Fregni Nagler has accumulated images that repeat a particular gesture – the negation of the parent in the interest of the legibility of the child. The many themes bubbling under the surface of her collection are unified by the singular principle of effacement – as if this gesture speaks of the nature of parenthood itself, or of women’s place in a patriarchal society, where she is figured without an identity of her own.
The collection also confronts the inevitable self-effacing nature of the photographer and the collector. The artist herself seems to hover over these images like a mother – conserving and safeguarding these photographs; as collector, presenter and curator of the collection, Fregni Nagler herself becomes another hidden mother.
more books tagged »archive« | >> see all
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19.06_26.08.1945 (signed - last copies)
by Andrea Botto
Euro 155 -
Back to the Future
by Irina Werning
sold out -
5 x 5. Photo Tracks
by Eikon
sold out -
ANATOPÉES (signed)
by Arnaud Lesage
sold out -
American Colour 1962 - 1965
by Tony Ray-Jones
sold out -
Berlin Mai 1945
by Valery Faminsky
Euro 52
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Ladli
by Fazal Sheikh
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Summer of the Fawn (last copy of book + signed print)
by Alain Laboile
Euro 450 -
Streetlife Bradford 1970s-1980s
by Ian Beesley
sold out -
Jeffersonville, Indiana (signed)
by Dana Lixenberg
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THIS IS WHAT HATRED DID (signed - last copy)
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Paradise Street: The lost art of playing outside
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Les Copains
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sold out -
Inside Out Kochi (last copy)
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by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin
Euro 33 -
An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus 'This is the new f...
by Rob Hornstra
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The Stories of Mandy and Eva
by Willeke Duijvekam
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Lupimaris (signed)
by Christian Stemper
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by Maja Daniels
Euro 62 -
Tractor Boys
by Martin Bogren
sold out -
Antarktis (signed)
by Gerry Johansson
sold out -
Go to Become (signed)
by Jörgen Axelvall
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Tree Stone Water (signed)
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sold out -
SOHO
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