Cosmopolitan
10 Intense Self-Portraits That Embody What It's Really Like to Be a Mother
"I dwell in the dark thoughts and recesses of my mind to create [the self-portraits]."
by TESS KOMAN
After looking back at the photos of her family from her first few years of motherhood, Susan Copich realized that she was never actually in any of the pictures. And so began Domestic Bliss, a series of intricately staged self-portraits of Susan The Mom.
The photos, which take anywhere from two months to two years to stage, come from dwelling "in the dark thoughts and recesses of my mind to create character and subject, in order to project them into a frozen moment of time, allowing the story to continue to unfold bilaterally for the viewer," Copich tells PetaPixel via email.
The photos are Stepford Wife-esque and sad, but that's the point. Copich credits the "personal, social and cultural" pressures she feels every day as a mother as the motivation for creating such a dark series. Those pressures can be seen in the noose hanging over her husband's head in one portrait and her strangling the family dog in another. Also, there are a lot of pictures featuring alcohol.
That being said, Copich wants the viewer to see humor in her portraits above anything else. See the photos for yourself:
