The Mother Calendar 1998 - Hardcover

If Diane Arbus and her mother had shared a similarly warped vision and sense of humor, they might have turned out Mother, a lush, splashy, totally twisted photo album. Photographer Judy Olausen and her 74-year-old mother Vivian--a model with tightly permed blond hair, soft, wrinkled grandmotherly skin, and an extraordinarily expressive face--skewer the clichés of 1950s motherhood and martyrdom. In one shot, Vivian appears as a slightly deranged Betty Crocker, frosting a heart-shaped cake with Valium icing. In another, she's in chains hunched over an ironing board. As the archetypal "Mother Under Pressure," she sports cat glasses, white gloves, and a prim purse while dragging a huge bolder upstairs on her back. In "Shocked by Spock," reading that venerable pediatric bible causes alarm and a near-faint. The collection delivers a wallop of edgy humor and social commentary about women being silenced or squelched in their daily lives and dreams.

Judy Olausen, named one of the top ten photographers in the world by Hasselblad, is a commercial photographer and photojournalist. She and her mother live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.