Photographer Focuses on Mothering and the Pandemic in Exhibition

By Neil Armstrong

Photo credit: Laurie Townshend     Laurel Yvonne Townshend in the photo essay "Sugarcane"

A photographer in Toronto has chosen to tell the story of her Jamaican mother amid the COVID-19 pandemic in a multimedia exhibition featured at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

‘Sugarcane,’ a photo essay by Laurie Townshend, who is also a filmmaker, was showcased at the annual month-long celebration in May, one of the largest photography festivals in the world.

The exhibition, “sweetgrass sugarcane saffron,” brought together the talents of three interdisciplinary artists – Townshend, Winona Ominika and Danielle Da Silva --whose work engages not only on an artistic level, but on social levels as well. 

It is an exploration of the interconnections between identity, time, and space while imagining the decolonization of a manufactured world that has been largely imposed by empirical forces.

Curated by Da Silva, instead of being in a brick and mortar venue the exhibition was held virtually in light of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Townshend says the theme of motherhood is central to her being and her work as a teacher.

“Sugarcane came about through a mentorship that I had with Photographers Without Borders. That organization is doing some really powerful work, allyship with different organizations around the world, and photographers who’ve been enlisted and honoured with the task of sharing stories from different NGOs.”

She got a mentorship with Da Silva, the founder of the organization, in November 2019 and one of the things that came along with it was the opportunity to co-present a photo exhibit for the photography festival.

“When we were talking about what we were each going to contribute to that show I just naturally turned to my mother and my own sort of more personal take on what it is to be a mother in the movement.” The artists agreed on the medicines: sweetgrass, sugarcane and saffron.

When COVID-19 struck in March, Townshend realized that her mother, Laurel Yvonne Townshend, is representative of a cohort of seniors who are vulnerable and predisposed to the virus and the risks associated with it.

Many of them are older Jamaican women in their seventies and eighties who are living on their own and this prompted the photographer to start looking at the data around who is supporting “our elders and the particular vulnerability of elderly Black women.”

Initially her mother had reservations about a photo essay being written about her but she subsequently warmed up to the idea.

“It’s (Sugarcane) coming from my daughter’s heart and therefore it makes me feel not only happy but satisfied that I did something right,” said Laurel.

Laurie lives nearby and is able to attend to many of her mother’s immediate needs so her day-to- day life is fine.

Understanding the risks to her mother’s health, Townshend was in a conundrum recently when she applied lotion to her mother’s back while knowing that physical distancing is required if people do not live in the same household

“We know how vital touch is and a mother’s touch that has been the sustaining energy that she’s provided to me throughout my life. We all, kids of aging parents, all understand the role reversal that happens where children end up caring for their elderly parents. And that’s been a dynamic that’s been happening and shifting in my life and my relationship with my mom for many years now.

“But to have the worry that your touch is going to in any way put her at risk it’s a real difficult thing to acknowledge and I did it literally holding my breadth so as not to breathe around her, but also holding my breadth in the figurative sense that I pray that this isn’t going to endanger her.”

This was done in the early days of the pandemic where there were many unknowns about COVID-19 and a lot of fear concerning it.

Now, whenever Laurie visits she puts on her mask and so does her mother and there is no longer the sense of foreboding she had in those early days.

Townshend is also working on a documentary, “Mothering in the Movement,” about

poet, activist and mother Staceyann Chin, who lives in Brooklyn, New York. It will be out in 2022.