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.

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.

Features & Reviews
The Guardian 
The Saturday Guardian newspaper (July 16-17, 2022) + Cover
The Guardian Weekly, July 22nd 2022
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)
El País (in Spanish)
The Fine Print 
Heroine (in Czech)
Eikon #119 (in German)
Vanity Fair Italy (in Italian)
The British Journal of Photography
The Luupe —Fifty-Seven Photography Books That Made Us See Differently in 2022

Exhibitions
My Obvious Presence. Lived Motherhood in contemporary visual culture, Deák Erica Galéria, Budapest, June 3-July 29, 2022
The Photobook Exhibition, Athens Photo Festival 2022, June 12-July 24, 2022
doing family, Vögele Kultur, Pfäffikon, Switzerland, November 15, 2022-March 19, 2023