ABOUT

The photographs of Jock Sturges are the record of people he cherishes: mothers and daughters, friends, children. Before his 8X10 camera, they show their relationship not only one to another, but also of the inner self to the world. Magical in their detail, these images are a collaboration of trust and admiration between artist and subject. Jayne Anne Phillip's compelling prose both illuminates the photographs and explores the unending sensuality and complexity of the bond between mother and child.

"In the 58 images of this handsome... monograph, Sturges sustains a delicate balance on a very precarious wire... His struggle is to observe and render his subjects in all of their complexities, trembling on the cusp of change. The result of this long-term, communal effort is one of the most clear-eyed, responsible investigations of puberty and the emergence of sexuality in the medium's history, making a metaphor of the metamorphosis from child to adult." - A. D. Coleman, The New York Observer