オーストラリア人フォトグラファー、リサ・ソルジーニ（Lisa Sorgini）の作品集。本書は、新型コロナウイルス感染症のパンデミックの渦中の数ヶ月間、前例のないロックダウンによる自宅待機の中、作者が母性について多層的に探求した、創造的かつ文化的な記録である。シリーズの撮影はオーストラリアで最初の自宅待機命令が出されたときに開始され、作者はその孤立した状況下での子育てにおける見えざる役割を可視化する必要性に迫られたという。それぞれの作品は自宅の窓際で撮影されおり、接触が許されない強制的な隔離状態を想像すると、この方法が身を切るような思いに晒される。バロック様式の肖像画のような趣を讃える写真群は深い優しさ、退屈、静寂、愛、フラストレーション、恐怖、絶望のスペクトラムを呼び起こす。同時に、長期間の監禁期間中の母性の光と闇を表現しており、柔らかな照明と色調のコントラストを用いることで、この隠喩に視覚的な生命を吹き込んでいる。この未曾有の時代に限らず、既存の母性の在り方や母親、女性における希望と結びつきの意識を記した作品集となっている。

Lisa Sorgini (b. 1980, Australian) is a photographic artist that has found her own maternal experience to be central to the themes in her work.

Behind Glass, offers a layered exploration of motherhood as shown during the months of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic, as unprecedented stay-at-home measures swept across Australia and the World. It’s an opus that stands as both a creative commentary and an important cultural record.

Born of the pandemic, shooting began for the series as the first stay-at-home orders came into force in Australia. Making portraits of those in her immediate community, It’s a body of work motivated by a need to make visible the unseen role of parenting during such isolation and one that evokes a spectrum of deep tenderness, tedium, quietude, love, frustration, fear, and despair. These works present the light and darkness of motherhood during these extended periods of lockdown; the use of soft lighting and tonal contrast bringing this metaphor to visual life.

Each work is framed by a window in the home, a practice that feels poignant given the circumstances of mandated isolation where no contact was allowed. It’s a process that suspends each subject within a liminal space of transference and adaptation, one that mothers endure but children are protected from. Babies are seen clinging to their mothers. Tiny hands tug at clothing and skin. Each image, a delicate assemblage of flesh, unposed, set against the backdrop of quiet familiarity. There’s tenderness, but also an omnipresent claustrophobia and intensity.

Dewy faces and subdued tonality lends some works the appearance of a baroque portrait. It’s a disarming technique that adds to the body of work’s transcendence and timeless narrative. One mother looks out from the pane – seen for a moment in a time they were only just beginning to understand, her expression almost indecipherable. Behind glass, mother and child appear like living and breathing masterpieces – divine comedies of domesticity.

Whilst informing of a particular time, Behind Glass also speaks more broadly of the existing maternal experience. Its most blatant subtext is that of motherhood as contextualised within the modern western milieu; where women lie at the core of an intense inner world whilst continuing to remain begrudgingly detached from the outer. Yet central to this story is also the concept of hope and connective awareness. Mothers joined through a collective experience. Through this work, the unseen is seen.

The book contains a foreword by writer and curator Federica Chiocchetti (b. 1983, Italian).