I recently watched the DVD release of Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project a documentary by Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland.

The documentary follows Tierney over the course of three years as she assembles her new body of work, a project that promises to be even more provocative than the photos that originally made her career.

The film documents an incredibly tumultuous period in Tierney’s life, from her move from London to Los Angeles to having a third child at age 41. Tierney is famously reclusive and has always wanted her work to speak for itself, for her audience not to have any preconceived ideas about what motivates the photographs. As Tierney says, all of her photographs are portraits of herself.

— Press Kit, Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project

Gearon’s mother — diagnosed as manic-depressive, schizophrenic — became the primary subject of her personal work after a period where she became notorious for her photos of her young children. She has been challenged on the validity of both projects and labeled by some an opportunist, exploiter, and very nearly a child pornographer. Gearon’s images are very often intense but also infused with the brightness and warmth of saturated commercial images.

Their relationship is complicated – her mother has suffered from mental illness for much of her adult life. Through the process of making these photographs, Tierney has struggled to understand how her mother lives now, as well as coming to grips with how her illness effected Tierney as a young girl. By extension, the process of taking the photographs also reflects Tierney’s struggle to be a good parent to her own children. Tierney describes her pictures as a form of therapy – a means of healing herself. The truth is never what it seems in Tierney’s world, however; the eerie tableaus at the heart of her work always hide a deeper meaning just beyond the edges of the photographs.

The documentary addresses the questions that have long been associated with Tierney’s controversial work, and by extension, questions that face all artists who draw on their family for inspiration. Are the photographs as therapeutic for her subjects as they are for her? Is the camera Tierney’s way of communicating with her family, or is it a protective shield?

— Press Kit, Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project

The documentary has been superficially compared to Albert and David Maysles’s 1976 documentary Grey Gardens. Similarities are drawn between Gearon’s mother and Grey Gardens’ subject “Little” Edie Beale. The more valid comparison seems to be the working style of the filmmakers; in each case they have maintained a long-term intimate relationship with their subjects while managing to portray them naturally. Their presence is felt but doesn’t seem to alter the relationships of the subjects radically.

This film was powerful for me for personal reasons but it is also a very effective document of an artist at work — both quite in control of her intent and vision and also struggling with its effect on her and her family.

• View the trailer for Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project.
• Purchase the DVD of Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project from Zeitgeist Films.
• Steidl / Dangin released a 2006 book of Gearon’s photos entitled, Daddy, Where are You?.
• TierneyGearon.com is out-of-date but does have some good images from her earlier series.