Maternal Mitochondria’s project “Original Face: In the Water” is a part of the 19th Edition of the Pollux Awards, which will be followed by a show at FotoNostrum’s gallery in December of 2023. All of the winners in various categories can be found here. Look for us in Non-Professional: Nude and Figure!

“Original Face” is a long-term photography project documenting the female members of my family and placing them in collaged environments which speak to the sublime, the doors of life and death opening and closing, and the perspective of the hidden v the seen. When the male gaze is removed, what is left? Is this the female gaze, the gaze of the self-portrait? Who is the subject and who is the object. What does it mean to have a self, a no self, an existential void within an embodied subject.

This project was made in collaboration with my mother, the poet Miriam Sagan. We work together as “Maternal Mitochondria,” handing the camera back and forth, writing back and forth. Therefore the patriarchal hierarchy of artistic endeavor is broken, and the matrilineal line is strengthened. This is how we see ourselves and each other. This is how we see.