Still holding still

From the early days of photography, we know a series of photographs called ‘Invisible Mothers’. In each of these portraits of young children, a ghostly apparition is seen behind the children. Those apparitions turn out to be their own mothers, who try to put the children at easy from beneath their veils, in the hope that the children will move as little as possible during the exposure time (which was still very long at that time). In Still holding still, this practice from the early days of photography is reconstructed, so as to creep ‘inside’ the images, ‘inside’ shutter speed.