This dissertation presents a reflective and critical investigation into the photographs mothers take or have taken of their children. The writer employs Roland Barthess Camera Lucida as a model for the projects structure and style; accordingly, images represent sites of inquiry and discovery within the text. In this critical-creative study, the writer looks at pictures of children to visually explore motherhood in the digital age and consider the relationship between photography and maternity. In a series of beginnings followed by 21 sections, the writer pieces together images, reflections, theories, and anecdotes to perform an analysis of domestic photography in an attempt to access the essence of motherhood and understand what that essence demands of and means for mothers in their everyday lives. Specifically, the critical apparatus consists of theories and scholarship related to vernacular photography, family photography, feminist motherhood, rhetorical theory, and mourning. The theoretical framework is coupled with personal observations and reflections on photographic products and processes today, including the image composition and photographic activities made possible by digital technologies. The writer highlights two key changes incurred by the current technological landscape: namely, the extent and speed of social interactivity on digital networks. These changes mean that photography now grants mothers the illusion that their children are and will be permanently accessible online. Thus, photography makes visible and satisfies the mothers desire for permanence; yet, this permanence is an illusion, one maintained by continual efforts to produce a comprehensive photographic record. The writer argues that photography ultimately creates virtual children who enable mothers to confront the inevitable departure of real, living children from the womb, the home, and the world. At the same time, the writer asks mothers to accept that having children necessitates loss as a condition of creation. By accepting this condition, the writer suggests mothers might be able to adopt an inventive approach to everyday life and discover new uses for their photographs.
