Jo Spence
Photo therapy: Mother and Daughter Shame Work (2). Crossing Class Boundaries, 1988
Vintage C-type prints, mounted together by Spence.
15 x 10 cms
5 14/16 x 3 14/16 ins
Series: 5. Photo Therapy Collaborations (1984-90)
12349
Provenance
The Jo Spence Memorial ArchiveRichard Saltoun Gallery, London
Exhibitions
Jo Spence : from Fairy Tales to Phototherapy. Photographs from the Hyman Collection, Arnolfini Bristol, (18th May 2020 - 20th June 2021) (this print)Jo Spence: A Woman’s Place? at Belfast Exposed in Collaboration with the Centre for British Photography. 7th October 2024 – 21st December 2024
Literature
Jo Spence Cultural Sniping (close variants illustrated p.170)
Jo Spence in collaboration with Valerie Walkerdine. Two overlapping photographs mounted together by Spence on graph paper. In this work, Jo reuses props from an earlier series she made a...
Jo Spence in collaboration with Valerie Walkerdine.
Two overlapping photographs mounted together by Spence on graph paper.
In this work, Jo reuses props from an earlier series she made a decade earlier called 'Remodelling Photo History: Colonization.' On the left Jo is pictured sweeping around two empty milk bottles, which are placed in front of her. She is purposely incorporating a traditional photography screen in the background, on which she stands, to highlight that this is a staged scene and she is performing on it.
In the original work, 'Colonization,' the two glass bottles are shown full of milk, with Jo standing on a doorstep, holding the same broom she now holds in 'Photo Therapy: My Mother'. In the earlier work, Spence wore nothing but a towel wrapped around her waist and is otherwise naked, treating herself as an object for scrutiny and dissection. The work was an anthropological study of a woman in a colonized country, and overall, a critique on Britain's own colonial history.
With 'Photo Therapy: My Mother,' Spence has further developed the piece to show how the woman herself has evolved. She is shown wearing traditional house clothes from the 1950s and 1960s, but brutally, nothing has really changed: the woman is still at home, she is still cleaning and feeding her family, providing for them. Ultimately, the work is a critique of the status quo of the decade that passed between the execution of the two works.
In Cultural Sniping, Spence captions these paired images (published the other way round): "It's such hard work shedding a theoretical tear. WIth some guilt I enact my personal stereotype of the mother I was ashamed to be associated with while in the social flight from my class roots." (p.170)
Spence also aded a speech bubble to the image of her as her mother holding a broom. It says: "I'll be so proud of you Jo when you get your degree and learn to be ashamed of me".
Two overlapping photographs mounted together by Spence on graph paper.
In this work, Jo reuses props from an earlier series she made a decade earlier called 'Remodelling Photo History: Colonization.' On the left Jo is pictured sweeping around two empty milk bottles, which are placed in front of her. She is purposely incorporating a traditional photography screen in the background, on which she stands, to highlight that this is a staged scene and she is performing on it.
In the original work, 'Colonization,' the two glass bottles are shown full of milk, with Jo standing on a doorstep, holding the same broom she now holds in 'Photo Therapy: My Mother'. In the earlier work, Spence wore nothing but a towel wrapped around her waist and is otherwise naked, treating herself as an object for scrutiny and dissection. The work was an anthropological study of a woman in a colonized country, and overall, a critique on Britain's own colonial history.
With 'Photo Therapy: My Mother,' Spence has further developed the piece to show how the woman herself has evolved. She is shown wearing traditional house clothes from the 1950s and 1960s, but brutally, nothing has really changed: the woman is still at home, she is still cleaning and feeding her family, providing for them. Ultimately, the work is a critique of the status quo of the decade that passed between the execution of the two works.
In Cultural Sniping, Spence captions these paired images (published the other way round): "It's such hard work shedding a theoretical tear. WIth some guilt I enact my personal stereotype of the mother I was ashamed to be associated with while in the social flight from my class roots." (p.170)
Spence also aded a speech bubble to the image of her as her mother holding a broom. It says: "I'll be so proud of you Jo when you get your degree and learn to be ashamed of me".