Catherine Opie and Sally Mann’s Exploration of Motherhood and the Domestic Sphere
Date of Award
4-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Art History and Visual Culture
Department
Art
First Advisor
Stefanie Snider
Second Advisor
Piper Hutson
Third Advisor
Trenton Olsen
Abstract
This paper analyzes the work of Catherine Opie and Sally Mann, white, contemporary artist mothers. Using the narrative and auto-ethnographic research methodologies and applying feminist theory, queer theory, and mother studies, this paper will investigate how contemporary photography is confronted with the work of artist mothers that utilize their mothering roles and status of mothers as a muse into their photographic work. The concept of truth in photography is explored in its role of playing into the visualization of the discomforts of representation within the work of the unseen mother in Sally Mann’s Immediate Family series and dismantling of stereotyped cisheteronormative images of domesticity and mothers in Catherine Opie’s Domestic series and Self-Portrait, Nursing.
Recommended Citation
Frohling, Krista Rose, "Catherine Opie and Sally Mann’s Exploration of Motherhood and the Domestic Sphere" (2024). Theses. 997.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/theses/997
Creative Commons License
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