Mother: A Collective Portrait is a deeply personal and profoundly human exploration of what it means to be a mother. In this luminous collection of black-and-white photographs and first-person stories, documentary photographer Mary Motley Kalergis invites women from across the country to speak candidly about their experiences of motherhood-its joys, struggles, humor, and grace. Drawn from interviews and portraits made over decades, these women share the moments that define family life: birth and loss, exhaustion and laughter, the shaping of identity, and the quiet endurance that love requires. Kalergis approaches each subject with an artist's eye and a listener's patience, capturing the truth of ordinary lives with striking empathy. Originally published to critical acclaim and now reissued as Volume IV in the Building a Family series, Mother: A Collective Portrait stands alongside With This Ring, Giving Birth, Considering Adoption, and Seen & Heard as part of a five-volume journey through the making of family. Together, these works document a half century of American domestic life and the universal bonds that sustain it. Both visual record and oral history, Mother reminds us that every story of motherhood is both utterly unique and beautifully familiar-a testament to care, resilience, and love that transcends generations.
Kalergis, Mary Motley: - Mary Motley Kalergis is an author, photographer and interviewer, whose work bears witness to the bonds that connect individuals, families, and communities. Her published books include Foxhunters Speak (Derrydale Press), Considering Adoption (Atelerix Press), Love In Black & White (Dafina Books, Kensington Publishing), Charlottesville Portrait (Howell Press), Seen and Heard: Teenagers Talk About Their Lives (Stewart Tabori, & Chang), With This Ring: A Portrait of Marriage (The Chrysler Museum of Art), Home of the Brave (E.P. Dutton), Mother: A Collective Portrait (E.P. Dutton), and Giving Birth (Harper & Row.) Her photographs are featured in numerous anthologies and collections including Aperture's Mothers and Daughters, Pantheon's Generations, Stemmle's In Their Mother's Eyes, National Geographic's Star Spangled Banner, Fawcett's In Celebration Of Babies, and Andrews McMeel's "Waiting for Baby, Reflections and The Enduring Circle of Love. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC; The Burden Gallery and the International Center of Photography in NYC; The Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia; The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia; the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida; The San Antonio Museum of Art;, The Field Museum of Chicago; the Museum Fur Photographie in Stuttgart, Germany and the Diaframa Kodak Galleria in Milan, Italy. Photographs by Mary have also appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world, including The New York Times, People, Time, Newsweek, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Seventeen Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Marie Claire (France), The Guardian (London), and Camera Manuchi (Japan). Mary taught at The International Center of Photography in New York and has served as "special stills" photographer on movie sets, including Long Walk Home, and Cousin Bette. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is currently working on her tenth book.
