“It’s a modern norm to encourage the separation of mother and child, and the return to your old self. “All of this really awakened a new desire in me to document these seemingly ordinary or everyday moments that are so very worthy of elevation and witnessing,” she says. After giving birth to her son, Woodward experienced a period of joy, grief and confusion, which she began to document with her camera. She then decided to do a degree in photography and, after finishing, took up work as a commercial photographer before refocusing on more personal projects. I spent most of my days around town shooting strangers, my grandparents, and cousins, having them developed on the same day at the local camera shop”. When I first left home, I moved back to the town of my birth and lived alone in a small apartment for a couple of years. “I ran the little photo lab in the local pharmacy in my mid-teens for a year or so, and ended up with a couple of warnings for spending half of each shift just developing my own film. And while “most other interests and hobbies had fallen by the wayside”, photography endured. I have memories of her setting me up on a garden bench with a bunch of daffodils to take my portrait” she recalls of her first foray into image-making. “I probably took my first photograph on what I vaguely remember as an old red 110 Instamatic my mother used. Through these pictures, Woodward highlights motherhood as a role that extends beyond space, time and definition – as she puts it herself, “it’s indescribable”. Set against various backdrops along Australia’s Sunshine Coast – inside quiet corners of the home, garden and pockets of nature – parents and children pose for the camera. With deep sensitivity, her images explore what it means to be a mum and, in doing so, challenge the very definition of the word itself. Australian photographer Amy Woodward uses her camera to document the early realities of motherhood.
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