Fotograf Magazine

We must imagine a world, where each woman will be the sovereign ruler
of her own body. In such a world women will indeed create new life, because they will not just bring new children into the world (should they decide to do so and in what manner they choose), but also ideas and thoughts essential for
the maintenance, solace and transformation of human existence. This is how we must start.

Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born

In her influential text from 1976 Adrienne Rich refused the institution of
motherhood as the typical form of the parental model created to support
patriarchal ideology. She defended motherhood as an experience during which women would no longer be victims of dated ideas on the maternal role and in which their bodies would fully belong to them. Thanks to their independence from the patriarchal order this experience could mean the start of a human society, where sexuality, politics, intelligence, motherhood, public and private life could all achieve a greater realisation of their potential. Thirty years later Justine Kurland addresses this experience in her photographic series, which offers countenance to the fact that this brave new world is, in fact, possible.