Undo Motherhood

Description

Undo Motherhood explores the reasons why a significant number of women around the world today regret becoming mothers. The women in this project love their children and are excellent mothers when judged according to society’s standards, and yet they hate the oppressive mother role that robbed them of their own existence and suffer through it in silence, feeling it to be the worst mistake they have made.

In this book, Diana Karklin combines two narrative languages: her photography and her interviews with women. It is divided into seven chapters: anger, fear, isolation, exhaustion, guilt, resignation and acceptance. The last chapter stresses the importance of accepting regret in order to be able to deal with it in a constructive way without harming the children.

Diana chose to present the seven stories from seven different countries as separate booklets – each with a ‘closed’ cover – in a slipcase, to highlight the loneliness of these mothers trapped in their homes and condemned to silence. As much as Diana would want to see them as a collective voice, the reality is different.

Features & Reviews
Onet Kobieta (in Polish)
Creative Boom
Bird in Flight (in Russian)
Die Zeit (in German)
Hessischer Rundfunk (in German)
Book Riot 
Tages-Anzeiger (in German)
Brigitte.de (in German)
Globalist (in Italian)

Design: Marina Meyer, Berlin/underbau, Madrid
ISBN 9789053309506
Format: 17 x 22 cm. portrait
7 separate booklets in a slipcase (4 of 52 pp, 1 of 48 pp., 1 of 44 pp. and 1 of 40 pp.; total 340 pp.)
Each booklet is a paperback with a 6 pp. cover
Content of the booklets in total 340 pp with 135 photos in full colour
One hand-made pop-up included
Paper engineering by Pilar Barrios Varela and Diana Karklin.