Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project Jack Youngelson/Peter Sutherland USA/UK/France/India 2006
Perhaps you’ve heard of acclaimed American art photographer, Tierney Gearon, from the child pornography brouhaha surrounding her 2001 exhibit at London’s Saatchi Gallery? The film only addresses this half-way through though, after we’ve seen the close family context in which her controversial photos were taken; even without Tierney’s ingenuous defence, the film eloquently refutes the allegations.
The real focus of Youngelson and Sutherland’s insightful debut documentary is Tierney’s intense relationship with her schizophrenic/manic-depressive mother. The crew follow single mother Tierney, two young kids in tow, working on her new photo project of Mom. Over a three year period we’re bustled between her mother’s chaotic home in upstate New York, to Tierney’s base in London, to her new home in LA.
Book-ended with grainy film of Tierney’s mother, who is illuminated through an aperture in her dark house, the film sheds light on her condition. Even on meds, she’s difficult and delusional. Sometimes she refuses to pose, other times she declares she’s a princess, or that she died once, and people in the woods brought her back to life. Interlaced old video footage and photographs from Tierney’s childhood show her as more of a mother to her mother than vice versa.
But Tierney’s mother is not the only one in the picture: Tierney herself is put under the spotlight, especially when she unexpectedly becomes pregnant with her third child. We see how her kids struggle with their mother: a theme sustained down the generations. Younger son Michael admits that sometimes he’s glad when Tierney goes away. Certainly it can’t be easy, with no obvious father figure, and constantly moving around the world. Yet older daughter Emilee, at least, seems to have remarkable patience and understanding of her mother. This, we sense, is another inherited attribute, born of Tierney’s love and acceptance of her mother, and her own children.
Tierney’s stand-out portrait of her mother shows a tangle of grey hairs floating across a face etched with affliction: a painful testament to her mother’s condition. But Tierney also shows us - equally without blame - the harmful effect her mother had on her life. In the most heart-wrenching scene, Tierney tearfully explains how the film’s signature photo, that of her baby son lying in the hot sun next to her oblivious mother, represents Tierney’s own exposure as a child. Through Tierney’s still lens, we glimpse her soft sadness, matched by Justin Marchacos’ affecting piano score. And through the moving picture, Youngelson and Sutherland capture her almost manic activity, mirrored in the somewhat unstructured nature of the film. By earnestly grappling with her life in her work, Tierney emerges as a figure of admiration.
As an unflinching examination of Tierney’s mother, The Mother Project pays tribute to her legacy. While there is no recompense for the suffering caused by her mental illness, the artistic understanding of photographs and film go some way to mitigate the burden.
