Mara Trachtenberg

Chicaken and Onesie
chromogenic print
24 x 20 in.

Through photography I attempt to reveal and reconcile contradictions between life and death, past and present, beauty and horror, wonder and fear, attraction and repulsion, animal and human. In my work I create images that incite emotional and intellectual friction and express the contradictions inherent in our dualistic world.

As thoughts of my future motherhood arise, memories of childhood surface. My past, present and future merge within the psychological space of my nightmares. Emerging from a black background the juxtaposition of animals (and animal parts) with nursery objects serve as a metaphor for the fraught dualities of motherhood and childhood, absence and presence, organic and inorganic and the terrible and ludicrous in my current work.

© Mara Trachtenberg