Maria Sturm
Mutterzunge
Photography
2022
With the ending of my pregnancy I started taking pictures of myself and since October 2020 I’ve been photographing us both. I operate the camera via an app on my mobile phone and concentrate to make sure that we both fit into the frame. I often squeeze myself into it and sometimes I won’t fit in.
I become aware of the frames edges and what is left outside just by taking a photograph:
In the act of photographing, I think about the fact that my child will not or only to a limited extent share my migrant and female reality of life. And I think of all our transience, the birth of my child has brought the previously weak awareness of it to the fore. While time feels endless and already gone at the same time, motherhood to me is deceleration. And I will always be a mother now.
The numbers in the title refer to the days left until and counting after birth.
*The title Mutterzunge translates to Mother Tongue and is based on Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s collection of stories by the same title, first published in 1990.
