Motherhood exists in constant flux. Caregiving shifts as my children grow, and I face a reckoning with how quickly intimacy transforms into independence. My focus is on the everyday, moments that might pass unnoticed. Taking a photograph requires me to step outside the moment, even when my role as a mother usually demands I stay inside it. That tension, between presence and distance, is at the centre of this work and my approach.
With my photography, I am not trying to sentimentalise childhood. I am more interested in its distance: how it is fully lived by children yet remembered imperfectly by adults. Childhood becomes something we circle around, mediated through memory and emotion. By photographing my children, I am reflecting on time and recall, about how childhood remains relatable because it is always just out of reach.
These photographs were made in winter, a time when sunlight is sparse and more fragile, it appears cooler and moves quickly through our day. In these images my two sons appear partially obscured, by shadow, by movement, or by the landscape itself. As their mother I am present just outside the frame; my camera is in my backpack.
In one image, my son stands close to a window, his face spilt between darkness and the last light of the day. The glass becomes a surface of reflection and separation, enclosing us in an interior space while letting in the outside world. In the other my sons move between bare trees, their bodies silhouetted against a pale winter sky. This season brings a slowing down as we spend less time outdoors, but with this there is also a heightened awareness: of time passing, decay and the promise of renewal.
NIKKI FOSTER 