IN ABSCENCE

IN ABSENCE

CREDITS

GUP Author

GUP TEAM

Artist

Monika Macdonald

Artist Website

monikamacdonald.com

Society places expectations on its citizens through labels; templates of existence. These expectations can be so pervasive that they’re even internalised, making it difficult, if not impossible, to arrive at an individual truth, or to take a genuine look in the mirror.

Disturbed by the confines of definitions related to family – with its labels like ‘wife’ and ‘mother’ – Swedish photographer Monika Macdonald (1969) began to photograph the women she encountered who had abandoned the lifestyle of the nuclear family, in order to seek their own identities and paths. The women wanted to break free of the feelings and behaviour supposedly associated with being a mother, and instead find an independent self, which celebrated their cravings for life and love, absent expectations.

In Absence was also published as a book by Kehrer Verlag.