By Ruth Skilbeck
In the late Victorian and Edwardian era, in
the early days of black and white photography, there was a popular photographic
portrait practice – now know as The Hidden Mother.
Babies and young children were photographed
in images where their mother was both present and absent, literally concealed –
hidden, often (to our eyes) hilariously clumsily, or eerily, under a spread, which could
be carpet or a curtain.
The hidden mother was a covered-up,
obscured shape that, in some shots, the infant was sitting on, in others the
hidden mother was a strange standing presence shrouded in a patterned bedspread
standing next to or behind the child. In each of the images the mother was
completely ‘hidden’ – no part of her protruded from the covering, yet in most
of them the hidden mother was impossible not to see.
The rationale behind covering up the mother
– which overturned the Madonna and child genre of painting representation of
mothers and their children was that, the sight of the mother distracted the eye
from the image of the child. Yet the child felt more secure in the photographic
studio having their photograph taken if the mother was also ‘there.’
This strange solution of absence and
presence was surely disturbing for the child- let alone the mother under the heavy
stifling carpet or curtain- and the expressions on the faces of the children in
hidden mother portraits show their distress and bewilderment. None are smiling
or relaxed, they all look disturbed and haunted by the knowledge of the absent presence
of their hidden mother.
The popular photographic portrait practice
of ‘the hidden mother’ now in retrospect serves as a reflexive
visual metaphor for the highly ambivalent ways in which mothers were regarded
in late Victorian and Edwardian society, and in Australia in the twentieth
century decades known as ‘the stolen generations’- when under an official White
Australia Policy children of “part Aboriginal” mothers were routinely taken
from their mothers and their mothers’ existence was erased from official and
family records; this was a practice that affected not only “part Aboriginal” mothers but also the children of mothers who for a multitude of reasons were not
considered socially or officially
acceptable (or perhaps the mothers had died, in childbirth or when the children
were very young.) Rather than remembering these mothers, official policy erased
their memory and presence from the record, so that their families were supposed
to never know who they were (as was the case in my own family history). Yet,
like the shape of the hidden mother under the carpet or the curtain, the
mothers’ presence remained, in a way that was disturbing, eerie and impossible
to ignore and not be aware of, for those who started to search. Like looking at
the photos of the hidden mother. The shape of the concealed mother remains in
the picture frame.
The images of the hidden mother have a
great resonance and have struck a chord with hundreds of thousands of users in
the blogosphere
The Hidden Mother flickr photo sharing
group started 32 months ago (0ctober
2010). Here’s a link to the first entries:
The Hidden Mother group rapidly gained
hundred of members and hundreds of images of children with ‘hidden mothers’.
What is most interesting is the level of
interest in the group. The images of the hidden mother- that most have not
known about- have spiked a huge response in the blogosphere. Some photographs have received thousands of
hit per day. The members report in the discussion pages on their surprise at
the popularity of their photographic curiosities.
I came across this site through a link to another
photographic archive on Retronaut that a friend posted on
Facebook. When I looked it up my eye was immediately drawn to the archive of
the Hidden Mother, on the menu next to the rules on dating.
When I clicked on it I was astonished to
see these images - that add another dimension and context to my own research
into Australia’s forgotten mothers, in the decades known as ‘the stolen
generations’.
Was this a style of photography that was
practiced in Australia?
I will put this onto my research project
agenda to find out.
5/28/12
© Copyright Ruth Skilbeck, 2012
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