The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery.

[YourAmplePlumPoster]

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/nov/12/steph-wilson-wins-taylor-wessing-photography-prize-with-striking-portrait1

It "subverts traditional images of motherhood." Apparently. Naturally, the luvvies are all over it.

I usually go to this exhibition but think I will give it a miss this year.

How stupid.

A false moustache and, important this, not smiling.

"an unconventional and “imperfect” example of motherhood"

What is imperfect here? She looks like a knackered mother, like all of us mothers at some point. No we are not always smiling, perfectly posed or even dressed!

Or is it just the stick on moustache that won the shot?

The artist’s ambition was to present sitters as more than just mothers, referring to all elements that contribute towards a whole person capable of many achievements.

Did anyone look at the subject's anatomy (never mind the pregnancy line/linea nigra and other changes) and feel baffled as to the sex of the main subject? Did anyone think, 'just a mother'?

I wouldn't describe the sitter's image as androgynous so much rather than a 'woman wearing a moustache and embraced by young child'. However, I'm not someone who instinctively understands images | diagrams and I often have to look at them from a range of angles and distances.

https://www.npg.org.uk/assets/uploads/files/press/2024/Press-Release-TWPPP2024-Awards-2024.pdf

According to the press release above, we needed to understand that the moustache brings a third generation into the image. Let's guess the sex of the member of the 3rd generation that it was important to bring into a 'subverted image of motherhood'.

Used to love this exhibition but it's been heading this way for years rewarding inferior images of gender bollocks

Why do they do this and what's more why do they reward it with prizes? Definitely won't be going to this.

To me, the image says, the baby has finally fallen asleep and I'm not moving. Or possibly, I'm pissed off because I can't move or the baby will wake up.

What they could have done, to really represent motherhood, is have the baby poop on her. That would be more realistic.

The moustache thing I'm not getting. There is no suggestion that this is a man so it seems a lazy add on to make people talk about it. I think the picture would have more impact without it tbh because it just distracts from the 'imperfect' side of motherhood otherwise portrayed.

The guff spouted about the picture is irritating in its pretentiousness, but otherwise I don't have a problem with it. I expected to click on it and read that it was a picture of a 'trans man' and refer to her as 'he', so actually I was pleasantly surprised.
I think it's interesting and humorous that she wears the false moustache because of her career; and 'a reference to instances when she was encouraged to embrace her masculine features by friends and family' is quite refreshing and definitely not the usual thing, where a girl or woman who e.g. has short hair or doesn't look or dress in a stereotypically feminine way decides she must perforce actually be male and changes her pronouns.
I'd say it's an imperfect example of motherhood because there's still a widespread tendency to picture women gazing lovingly at their baby, not at the viewer, or to be smiling contentedly rather than looking shattered and grouchy. I like the confrontational gaze here. It is definitely not designed to ingratiate.
And I'd agree that it 'subverts traditional images of motherhood', for the same reason as above, plus because it's not usual for the very bits of a woman's body that can make her or that signify being a mother (breasts and, much more so, genitals) to be on blatant show; there is that weird tendency to 'celebrate' an expression of having had sex by studiously avoiding all visual suggestions of a woman as a sexual being or an animal.

That photo is making me tense as it’s one trump away from a very different scenario. It’s ‘unauthentic’ as it’s so obviously staged - no exhausted mother of a young baby would contemplate having a baby on her unclothed like that. Puts a new spin on the word ‘shattered’.