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Finally, we looked at the clothed/unclothed portraits. We both gravitated to the last one. I held it up. In the exact middle of the portrait, my clavicles and Caitlin's hand, so graceful with her elegant nails, meet. Caitlin's fingers, covering my heart, seem to lay claim to my body. I can trace the faint stretch marks visible on my belly. My oblique profile accentuates Caitlin's unflinching stare. Although I sit in front of Caitlin, she seems to come forward while I recede. To me, the portrait chronicles the changing orbit of mothers and their emancipated children.

Inside the mailer, John and Julie had enclosed a letter asking permission to make a platinum print of this final picture to include in a retrospective show that would cover a decade of their photographs. If we consented, they would give us our own copy of the platinum print.

There was no question: Caitlin and I wanted to give our consent. We imagined the odd sensation of attending the opening in Madison, Wis., and standing beside our portrait. The photograph documents the comfort that Caitlin and I have with each other, both physically and emotionally. To us, having the photograph included in the show offered the opportunity to exhibit this intimacy publicly.

But having the portrait on public display also meant allowing our private relationship to be open to public interpretation. Although we perceive our close tie as healthy and untainted by pathology, some people might see the photograph differently. They might criticize the portrait as unwholesome -- even disgusting. But Caitlin and I would interpret that response as saying something about the viewer. We'd slough it off.

I was concerned, however, about Jeff's reactions, and those of my parents, who lived nearby. Although the retrospective would take place in Madison, more than an hour's drive away, Milwaukee papers often review the Madison art scene and friends of theirs might read about the photograph or see the exhibit. If someone Jeff knew saw the picture -- like his daughter who lived in Madison -- and expressed disgust to him, he wouldn't be able to toss the comment aside.

I dreaded telling Jeff about the upcoming exhibit. We'd already had one argument after I disclosed that I'd been nude for some of the mother/daughter portraits. He had blasted me with questions: "Why do you always have to push the envelope? What did Caitlin think?" He insinuated there must be something wrong with me -- as a mother and as a person. If he was this upset about a photograph intended for our private viewing, he would certainly not take kindly to the idea of the same photograph in a public space.

Jeff had seen plenty of pictures of me on art school walls, but never in a gallery. And there's something about a photograph: It's one thing to have me captured in charcoal or paint on a wall, quite another to have me displayed in a full frontal photograph, with no soft shading or muffled pigment to cover me. The pose itself, with Caitlin and me together, increases the exposed quality of the image.

After I had considered all the elements -- the heightened medium of photography, the graphic nature of the pose and the fact that it would be displayed in a public gallery -- I reluctantly offered Jeff the prerogative to keep the photograph out of the show. Caitlin was disappointed by my decision, though she said she understood my reasons.

Jeff wasn't my only worry. I also had to consider how my mother and father would react. My mother goes to art museums all the time. She has read my writing about art modeling; she has seen drawings of me nude. But she has never seen what I do. Earlier in the summer, she had turned down an invitation to watch me model. This photograph was a work of art. Maybe it would be just the thing to help her push beyond her uneasiness about nudity; maybe she would celebrate a photograph of her daughter and granddaughter being displayed at the Wisconsin Academy of Art.

My mother happened to be visiting on the day that John and Julie delivered -- in person -- our copy of the platinum print. I was struck by how the embedded quality of the platinum print reinforced the drama of the portrait. In platinum, the image seems to soak into the paper rather than lie on top of it. I appear to sink into Caitlin.

When she saw the print, my mother didn't comment. Nothing.

I called her the next day to gauge her reaction.

"Mom, how do you feel about John and Julie including the photograph of Caitlin and me in their show?" I asked.

"I'd rather they didn't," she replied curtly. "I'm worried the picture will come back to haunt someone." She said that she was worried about protests from political conservatives. After some prompting, she confessed that she was more worried about her own friends seeing -- or hearing about -- the photograph.

"Well, you could just say, 'I think it's a wonderful picture,'" I suggested.

"Yes. Yes I could. But your father will not be happy about this."

A few days later, when I brought up the portrait during another phone conversation, she said that she didn't believe she had a right to keep the picture out of the exhibit.

By this time, Jeff had also mulled over the situation. He had finally come to the conclusion that my happiness and my creative freedom outweighed his own anxiety.

Subject closed. I had won a shallow, begrudging victory. I hadn't advanced my cause to have Jeff and Mom applaud my modeling as soul-enhancing performance art, but I hadn't lost any ground, either.

I went upstairs and pulled out the platinum print. Was having the image in the retrospective worth potentially humiliating my parents? Was it worth putting Jeff and me through an emotional wringer? I propped up the picture on my bed and looked at it.

Yes, it was.

As it turned out, Caitlin and I couldn't make it to the Madison opening, but Jeff surprised me by proposing we make the 80-mile drive to Madison to see the show together. The photograph was placed in the middle of three mother/daughter portraits. Jeff noticed how in all three portraits the adolescent daughters stare straight into the camera lens, while the mothers look askance. He got so excited that he called to see if his daughter was around so she could come and see the pictures, too. I hadn't won Jeff over. Art had.
salon.com | March 24, 2000

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