Charlie Engman: Mom - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Featuring a luxurious cloth cover and texts by Rachel Cusk and Miranda July, MOM is Charlie Engman's homage to his mother's many selves

Brooklyn-based photographer Charlie Engman (born 1987) has been shooting portraits of his mother Kathleen McCain Engman since 2009. Collected into a single monograph for the first time, Engman's striking series portrays the artist's mother in a variety of surreal scenes, sometimes nude and at other times dressed in a furry red jumpsuit, in the photographer's studio or in a field on the side of a road.

Engman's work depicts an intense collaboration between photographer and subject that challenges the conventions of portraiture. In addition to Engman's photography, this publication also includes an essay by novelist Rachel Cusk and a conversation between Kathleen McCain Engman and writer-filmmaker-artist Miranda July, who writes: "I look at Charlie and Kathleen and realize I could dream a little bigger. A little weirder. But how does one raise a child so confident that he can create a world of groundbreaking possibility with his own mother"

Review Quotes

Charlie Engman started making photographs of his mother over a decade ago, in 2009. Initially, he was just naturally taking pictures of everything around him, including his parents. But then he noticed that his mother seemed to change in front of the camera. "Sometimes people transform for the camera, I couldn't recognize the person in the picture." This observation led to a long-term artistic project, his daring composite portrait of his mother Kathleen McCain Engman, at times both intimate and provocative.-- "Photo Eye"

Compositional, sculptural, performative and active, the American artist's photographs emerge from a desire to connect to the prosaic and the everyday, juggling ideas of intimacy, fantasy and -imperfection. In his latest book, hundreds of images of his mom, Kathleen McCain Engman, destabilize the idea of "mother," lifting her from the baggage of the real.--Editors "Kaleidoscope"