OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, November 8th, 4-6 pm
How do you raise children while raising your voice as an artist? The exhibition Nurturance & Ambition: Motherhood in Photography at The Seattle Light Room explores this question.
The artists featured took a class of the same name at Photographic Center Northwest led by Anna Ream and Annabel Clark in 2022 and 2025. The class uses a historical framework that reflects on themes central to the work of mother photographers such as self and social identity, strength, vulnerability, time, and the development of an authentic voice when so much focus is directed toward others.
For mothers and caregivers, art is often created during the margins of the day — after bedtime, between meals, and during rare moments of solitude. What’s made in those hours refuses to shrink. The work holds the weight of change, the pressure created by scarcity of time, and the insistence of an artistic voice that is determined to keep going.
The photographs in this exhibition aren't just about motherhood as a subject. They are about how mothering reshapes one’s artistic practice, how nurturance and ambition both struggle for attention, and how persistence keeps creativity alive.