| Project
Willendorf Venus |
My life has taken me to many countries and varied locations within the
United States. I have photographed nature, people and landscapes from the cliffs of
Northern California to the beaches of the Caribbean, from the shores of
the Sea of Japan to the plains of the Brazilian interior, from Victoria
to Cancun, from Alaska fishing villages to the dance halls of Buenos
Aires.
It has now become time for new discoveries in photography. While I
will continue photographing life around me whether street vendors or
ordinary tourists, I intend to focus special energy in photographing
women; celebrating women.
For this I am returning to some of the oldest art extant. I go
to Willendorf's Venus dated about 25,000 years ago. This very ancient
figure has been the center of the Goddess Mother speculation of recent
years.
The concept of an Earth Mother or Mother Goddess
or Great Goddess derives primarily from the Greeks. In the Theogony,
written in the early 7th century BCE, the poet Hesiod named the
"deep-breasted" Earth Gaea, "a firm seat of all things
for ever," who, after emerging out of Chaos, brought forth
"starry Ouranus" (the sky), Mountains, the sea, and, after
having lain with Ouranus, a number of non-cosmological Titans.
Willendorf has at times been considered an
early prototype goddess leading to the later worship of Gaea,
the Earth Mother. However this may be, my project will go the
other way. I will celebrate human motherhood as an extension of
divinity. I am hoping to follow a handful of mother's through
the last few months of pregnancy and to document the changes in
their relationships with others, the fathers, friends, relatives
and the child or children. |
