Our visit to Home Truths at the Photographers’ Gallery (this was back in December, see earlier posts for more detail) started at the top and worked down. After the Katie Murray film on the top floor we went down one floor to the Lower Gallery. The first work was a large photo of a woman’s body immediately after birth. Only her torso is shown. Her breasts are full, her belly is slack and a freshly stitched scar shows the delivery was by Caesarian.
A little further into the exhibition space was a sign saying SOME WORK IN THIS GALLERY IS OF AN EXPLICIT NATURE (or words to that effect). H and M are not perturbed seeing the extreme effects of birth on the female body. We felt confident that EXPLICIT wouldn’t worry them. One of us hurried ahead anyway into the main body of the exhibition space.
The image which earned the warning sign was Mom on Top of Boyfriend (2002) by Leigh Ledare. It is part of a series of photos and other material exploring his relationship with his mother. It shows her naked astride a man’s face. His tongue, straining to lick her vagina, appears unusually large.
H and M were already hurrying anticlockwise round the walls, delivering a quick verdict on each image: She’s sad. Look at her hair. Are those things, those coloured things, … what are they? That one’s boring.
We felt we had no time to decide what to do. Telling H and M to go out again would provoke questions from both of them, and probably an argument with H. We dithered a few more seconds. As H and M approached Mom on Top of Boyfriend one of us stood in front with jacket spread open like a man shielding his wife as she changes on the beach. The other accompanied H and M. M hardly noticed. She couldn’t see the photo that was being obscured so she simply moved on to the next. H, on the other hand, was immediately both interested and suspicious. She asked why we were blocking her view. We said we didn’t want her to see the image. She shifted and managed to catch a glimpse. ‘That’s disgusting’ she exclaimed.
