The Spirited Review - Mother Earth

Mother Earth: Through the Eyes of Women Photographers and Writers Edited by Judith Boice

Mother Earth is a collection of photographic and literary works by women about the earth on which we live. Although some American women have gained significant popular cultural attention for their contributions to landscape painting (first and foremost would obviously be Georgia O'Keeffe) and some for their contributions to nature writing (Diane Ackerman, Annie Dillard, Rachel Carson, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh all spring to mind, and all are included in this edition), few, if any, female photographers have become household names in the same manner. In Mother Earth, Boice sets this to rights, sharing with us views from the lenses of thirty-five nature photographers. The images are fantastic. Some are particularly feminine, including the cover image of a dune scene that looks like a navel, and a field of Cabernet Sauvignon vines and mustard weeds that look like women dancing, while others are more ethereal, like the moment an Earth Star dispersed spores or the full moon behind the mountains of Nepal. Boice has organized the collection into five "gently" delineated categories of mineral, plant, animal, human and oneness, (and while I would like to quibble with her separation of human from animal, I do recognize that many folks in western culture embrace this boundary.)

Boice intended Mother Earth to be a primarily visual work, but the brief paragraphs or phrases that accompany the photographs are also particularly illuminating about women's relationship to their first mother. A half dozen short essays are included: Boice introduces the collection; Annie Dillard contributes an essay on time, meaning and place excerpted from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek; Hildegard Flanner offers a wrenching memoir of destroying an unproductive cherry tree; Anne Cameron tells a story of love between a whale and an eagle and of how the Orca came to be; Joanna Macy reminds us that we carry all of the history of Gaia within our bones and blood and breath, giving us back to the heartbeat of Gaia, challenging us to listen for that sound; and Alice Walker shares with us the bond she has experienced with animals, and a revelation of how the universe does and will respond to prayer.

As a writer and photographer myself, I found this collection to be particularly valuable because it gives voice and view to so many women and their relationships with the earth. Sometimes the environmental movement seems awash with the actions and perceptions of men, and it is therefore relieving to see so many women engaged in creative expression of their earthly loves. I found myself making mental notes about the few writers whose works I had not read as I also relaxed into the company of old friends.

My only hesitation about Mother Earth comes from the section on the human realm. In a collection that is largely of American photographers and writers, it made me uncomfortable that the majority of images in this section were of members of other cultures than those of the observers themselves, including a south African dancer in "traditional dress," a male pow wow dancer in "traditional dress," a "folk-craft artist" in Japan, and a woman with a pipe and parakeet in Panama. Following immediately the section on the "animal realm," I think that there will be some subtle inferences drawn from the proximity, including the romanticized notion that "other" (non-western) peoples are more primitive, more aligned with the earth, more like the animals. This is a regrettable flaw, and presumably not the intent of the editor.

Otherwise, Mother Earth is a beautiful and nicely balanced work, and a much needed gathering of perspectives of women on the land. I hope that in bringing recognition to the artistic contributions of women to the environmental movement, it will inspire both women and men to nurture their own creative energies and offerings.

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