Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding


Breastfeeding is a series of rich images depicting mother breast-feeding their toddlers in public settings. These images are inspired by the mothers who collaborated with me and the paintings of Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch.


Returning on a flight from Spain I was sat across the aisle from a mother who was breatfeeding her two year old child. I was aware seeing a mother feeding an older child in a public space in the UK was a very rare sight.


On returning home I began to research various aspects of breast-feeding. To my surprise both our government and the W.H.O recommend breastfeeding children up to the age of two as a minimum. Given this advise why do we not see more mothers breastfeeding children beyond six months?


My aim was to produce a series of environmental portraits of breastfeeding mothers. I did not want to over sentimentalise the images, but wanted to question westerns society's taboos concerning breast-feeding older children in public spaces. I went on to work with young mothers as in the UK there is a very low percentage of young mothers that breast feed at all.