My Mother

• Photographer
  Anita Russo, United Kingdom
• Website
  http://

'My Mother'
My mother is 77years old. I wanted to capture her skin in a series of three intimate portraits. I cropped each frame to draw attention to certain parts of her body. Each portrait of her body thus tells a story?
The first image shows no indication of her true age except perhaps the fact that she is wearing a hand sewn extender on her bra. This image does not give other obvious clues to the person?s life except revealing that the body has gone through a change in size typical after childbirth and middle age spread.
The second image is the key to the series. I believe hands are the true indication of age. You can not only tell her age by the wrinkles and pigmentation marks typical of an older woman but also feel the life she has lived ? a hard life. She is an Italian immigrant who settled in Scotland after World War Two because her hometown was destroyed, her life changed forever. The gold jewellery is typical of an Italian woman. The rings reveal a long marriage: engagement, wedding and eternity rings are all evident. The holy medals represent her Roman Catholic faith.
The final image shows a scar she has borne all my life, her caesarean scar, as a result of me and my twin sister. Her girdle also hints at her old fashioned attire and attitudes as well as her age.
This final image completes the series as it depicts the most ?motherly? part of her.

I am a fashion graduate BA(hons) European Fashion from Kent Institute of Art and Design. I won first prize in the fashion section in the Royal Society of Art?s(RSA) annual Student Design Awards in 2001.

I discovered I wanted to pursue my passion for photography. Hence I have been studying photography for a few years and am currently in my final year of an Advanced Diploma Degree at Glasgow Metropolitan College.

I find my background in fashion is advantageous as I have a natural ability to style and coordinate. I also have great attention to detail which comes from my fashion design skills.

I have a wide range of photographic styles. I enjoy the polished images of fashion as well as gritty documentary styles. I would say however that my strongest talent lies in portraiture. I enjoy meeting strangers and forming a rapport comes natural to me and this is evident in my portraits ? some of which are taken within a matter of seconds.

I would feel equally comfortable in the ?unreal? perfect world of fashion photography as I would in the ?real? world of photojournalism. My versatility I believe means I have a successful photography career ahead of me.

The images I have submitted to PX3 ?Human Condition? are my family portrait series ?Life Passing By? which depicts a certain sadness about them.
There is indeed a sense of life passing by in both my photographs: I have kept both images dark and slightly underexposed to convey this sombre feeling.

My mother is 78 yrs old and agoraphobic and I photographed her in her bedroom - her ?safe place?. Her bedroom is typical of the older generation who are somewhat superstitious and keep a lot of holy statues and trinkets scattered around the bedroom as well as old framed family portraits of beloved family members long since gone. My mother does not wake up looking forward to the day - she feels every day is the same now. And that life passes by so quickly.

My sister like me is afraid of growing old and I photographed her on a visit to our first home which has been untouched and abandoned for over 20 years. To her it felt like years had passed yet where had it gone and how so fast?
An old newspaper lying on the table in front of the sofa has the heading ?Don?t let life pass you by!? This was a pure coincidence (and rather eerie) and since it was so apt I made sure to include it in the shot when framing up. The newspaper summed what I was hoping to capture in my sister?s portrait.

Both my images convey real human conditions and are not quite what you would expect for a family portrait. However I feel the typical ?cheesy? family portrait is misleading. All families have skeletons in the closet but very few family portraits show this. Mine does.