I have been feeding my son for four years now and my milk has almost dried up. These images seek to capture the memory of my milk and the physical and emotional work of feeding my son. I see my work of breastfeeding much like endurance performance.
This series (of which here are 4 of 24) has been made by squirting milk from my breasts onto digital photographs of myself expressing milk.I wanted to capture the energy and force of the milk through the gestural mark on the paper, and was also thinking about bodily fluids that make and sustain life.
I love how these last pearls of milk appear from my nipples.I enjoy the erotic nature of these images and the parallels between the squirting of milk and the ejaculating penis. I was thinking about ejaculation being referred to as ” a little death” and photography as a medium to capture memories and the death of my milk.
I was reminded about Roland Barthes writing about grieving for his mother in Camera Lucida, and through these images how I grieve the loss of this time with my son, nurturing his body from my own.
