Annie Wang, who is from Taipei City, Taiwan is an internationally renowned photographer.
Like most artists, she wanted to go beyond the norm and as such, a stereotypical mother-child relationship didn’t suit her.
“My artistic strategies are based on self-representation,” Annie said. “In the world of mothers where everything is hidden, the best way to speak out is through the strategy of self-representation, to express various parts of the self. I, as a woman and a mother, have tried to actively create my own self, instead of being passively interpreted by a male artist, as is traditional.”
She views motherhood as a long and complex journey that shouldn’t be just about sacrifice and selflessness. She draws parallels between motherhood and her vocation as an artist in the sense that she was bringing something new to the world while nurturing it through various stages of its existence.
“The Mother is like an artist doing her work while calling upon her own wisdom,” she explains. “The Mother not only creates a life but also creates continually a continuous and fluid matrix of experience between Mother and Child.”
Taking this idea to heart, she expresses this fusion of artist and mother with her series “The Mother As A Creator” where she documented her and her son at various stages of him growing up.
“Here I take a family photograph each year of my son and myself, and then the next year, take another image of us in front of the previous picture,” she explains. “Therefore, different layers of my son and I emerge on the same surface after a lengthy accumulation of detail and texture.
Different stages of my son and I are overlaid, and from the different pictures, we have created a dialogue with each other in this dimension upon compressed dimension. From within these dimensions will emerge a new depiction/visualization of Motherhood.
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As expected, the results are stunning and have touched hearts across the globe. Now 18, her son is proud and happy to have been an integral part of his mother’s incredible art and even looks forward to continuing that journey with her.
Check out the pictures below!
2001 – The day before giving birth
2002 – Big and small hands pressing the shutter
2003 – Taking a photo while son’s leg was in a cast
2004 – Christmas together
2005 – Putting up the exhibit
2006 – Hard at work
2010 – Growing up
2011 – Dreamy mood
2014 – Catching up on height
2018 – Shades of independence
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