Motherhoods. A diverse perspective Temporary exhibition

Let's imagine then that she's the mother. Where is the proof of her pain? The fact that she isn't smiling is no longer a sign of gravity from the very moment that the photographer told her to sit still in front of the camera, with the body of her dead son on her lap, for a time that we consider indecent, given the circumstances. But that is exactly what this type of portrait does: create a record of the pain in the instant that it is happening. Religious iconography has accustomed us to exaggerated expressions of grief-stricken motherhood or the exemplary elegance of the different representations of the Pietà, with that solemn, resigned sorrow of the Mater Dolorosa, bowed over the inert body of what in life had been her son.

However, the premature death has taken this devastated mother by surprise. With the smell of medicines still clinging to the clothing when the photographer arrived, she has had to find strength where she didn't think she had any to dress the child and make a parting in its hair with a little eau-de-cologne. And also to pull back her own hair in a bun and neatly tie the ribbon on her neck, without realising that she still had the safety pin hanging from under her arm and which she perhaps had used to fasten the child's bib while nursing.

The saddest part of photographing dead infants is always the mother, left to live on, engrossed in perpetuating the futile effort of giving birth. The body on her lap is an offensively palpable weight that will leave a mark on her dress, a crease bereft of warmth that will have to be smoothed when the session has ended, even though the empty space will remain, like a black hole, like an invisible thread that she seems to want to hold on to, closing the fingers of her hand. Don't go, let's prolong a little longer this moment that keeps us both from the shadows and the sinister certainty that children die, as if we wanted to shut out the very existence of evil.

Eva Vázquez Ramió