I’m excited to share the news that an editorial spread about my project Momma Love ; How the Mother Half Lives is featured in the Jan/Feb issue of Mothering Magazine! Mothering is a very cool magazine that discusses all aspects of motherhood in a raw, unfliching way. It’s available for sale at Borders, Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods, Babies R Us in the U.S. and Chapters in Canada, as well as in many independent book, natural food, and baby stores across North America.

Please spread the word!

Momma Love’s Kitty Stillufsen (who I photographed for Marie Claire a couple of months ago) was on The Nate Show, along with her parenting partners and couple, Darren Greenblatt and Sam Hunt. They were talking about their unique parenting situation.

See clips from the show here and here and look for some of the photos we did together in the show’s montage introduction.

The Museum of Motherhood makes it it’s mission to spread the word about how mothers are living and have lived their lives throughout history. In keeping with that goal, they recently honored me with a piece about Momma Love.

A photo of Momma Love’s Kitty Stillufsen (see her story in the Marie Claire article on this blog) was one of 50 winning images, selected out of over 2,500 entries, by the prestigious Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. The other work selected is great, which always makes you feel good about being a part of the group. All winning images will be published in an upcoming book about family.

Santa Fe Workshops FAMILY contest

Marie Claire Greece just ran a beautiful 5 page spread on the Momma Love project.

I recently met an amazing woman named Jessica Shyba. It just so happens, she writes a very successful blog that chronicles her relocation from the suburbs to NYC with her husband and two beautiful kids. Suburban to urban mom is a move I’ve been hearing more and more about lately.

Jessica is one of the moms I’ll be talking to and photographing for my Momma Love book project. She honored me with a very cool mention about the Momma work, and about my work photographing mothers in prison, on her blog this month! You can read her piece about it here.

The August issue of Marie Claire (on stands now) features photos I took of Momma Love momma Kitty Stillufsen in an article about how she “proposed” parenthood to her two gay best friends! The three of them conceived and are raising a daughter named Olive together. It’s an incredible story. In addition to being excited to shoot Kitty’s story, I’ve been wanting to do something with my art for a long time now that will support issues surrounding gay rights. I’m an ardent supporter of gay marriage, but it seems hard sometimes to figure out how to do anything actually productive with your art to support causes you believe in. This was a unique opportunity to  do just that. To support the rights of people who love each other to have their commitments respected. To honor this beautiful family with the respect they deserve.

This story has since run, with these and additional photos, in Marie Claire Australia and Greece, and in Italian Grazia Magazine.

Momma Love is not only about the love a mother shows. It’s about the love she is shown, by herself and the world around her.

We all feel an undeniable pull toward our mother’s love. If the bond between you and your mother was strong and healthy, it created a space of unparalleled safety and comfort for you. If it was distorted or missing, you’ve probably spent a lifetime coming to terms with that fact, seeking it out or letting it go. Either way, mother love is profoundly symbolic and powerful—so much so that entire religions, mythologies, and classic works of literature are built around either the sanctity or the destructive power of it. Societies need “Momma Love” in order to survive, but very often don’t know how to take care of it properly.

The details and rituals of motherhood largely go unnoticed and are taken for granted. They are talked about among mothers in private places—in toy-strewn living rooms, in kitchens, or over the phone while a child throws a tantrum on the floor nearby. To an outsider, motherhood seems like a profoundly important secret society, one that I started this project to understand more fully.

Each woman I photographed for this project has the truth of her experience to offer. In creating this book I have attempted to bring a community to light, creating a patchwork-quilt of advice, empathy, reflection, commiseration, opinion, anger, assurance, and love. In order to nurture healthier mothers and a healthier society, honest conversations about the realities of motherhood and how mothers are treated are necessary.

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If you have your own MOMMA LOVE story to share, please share it here! Maybe your story will become a part of the project. (Nothing you write will be used without your prior permission)

And stay tuned for updates on the release of this book.