Maternal Love by Clarence White 1905
This is an image by Clarence White a founding member of the
Photo-Secession movement. This pictorial
image, as the title suggests, the ‘love’ or relationship between a mother and a
daughter. A look of remorse strewn across her face, the girl is shown glancing
away from a ghostly figure of her ‘mother’.
Being softly focused, grainy in appearance with a slight hue this image
is very typical of the pictorialism. A double negative has been used to create
the ghostly figure of the mother, this connotes that the mother could have
passed away or not in her life any more. The way the mother is looking at the
daughter however appears to be a look of love as if to say the mother is still
watching over the daughter. On many levels this is an already dark image with
its dark shades and being mostly black, but the ghostly mother figure just adds
to the ambiance. The Victorians were so melancholy and macabre, this image demonstrates that with the ghostly figure, this also seems to reflect upon the spirit photography
going on at the time.
