Hidden Mother

• Hardcover
• Photography / Visual Art / Memoir / Essays
• Publisher: Saint Lucy Books (January 1, 2017)
• ISBN-10: 0692799273
• ISBN-13: 978-0692799277
• 7.25 x 4.5 inches
• 6 pages, 26 Color and Black and White images

Shortlisted for 2017 Best PhotoBook of the Year by Aperture and Paris Photo.

Hidden Mother tells the story of the adoption of Larson’s daughter from Ethiopia as mapped through nineteenth-century hidden mother photographs. The term “hidden mother” refers to the widespread but little-known practice in 19th-century portrait photography of concealing a mother’s body as she supported and calmed her child during the lengthy exposures demanded by early photographic technology. In the final portrait of the child, the mother—often covered from head-to-toe in a black drop cloth—appears as an uncanny figure. A practical strategy deployed by the photographer unintentionally yielded an evocative representation of the mother; never meant to be seen, her presence nonetheless haunts these images.

Part photography book, part essay, Hidden Mother enlists these strange and powerful images to present a lyrical account of becoming a mother through adoption.

Reviews