Jessica Todd Harper

One is to convey that stage in life when you're anchored to the home with young children, it also references how the home is the first stage in which children learn how to live in every situation. In my particular pictures, many of them have a stage-like quality. There's reference to tableau vivant of the past, these constructed images.

Jessica Todd Harper

At the time, I felt like so many parents. I felt tired and distracted and busy trying to get things done. I felt a little bit of guilt about making this picture, and yet I knew somewhere in the back of my head that there was an imperative that I must take moments. ... You're just so busy that if you don't purposefully force it, then it wouldn't happen.

Jessica Todd Harper

It's a universal mother-and-child gesture, it doesn't even matter particularly who that individual mother or that individual child is because of the way they're framed and photographed. You can't see their faces. It's just the way that her hand is resting on his back. It's ownership and protection and love.

Jessica Todd Harper