Movie Review Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project

Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project

Initial release: 2006 Directors: Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland Music director: Justin Marchacos Cast: Tierney Gearon, Peter Sutherland Producers: Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland Cinematography: Jack Youngelson, Peter Sutherland

Photographer Tierney Gearon—best known for pictures of her naked children, assailed as pornography during a London show—set out to create a new cycle portraying not only her kids but her elderly, irascible, and occasionally unbalanced mother. Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland’s intimate documentary captures all three generations as Gearon conceives and shoots the photos. It’s fascinating for its glimpses of how her troubled upbringing colors her efforts to raise her son and daughter. The men in these families are long gone, and when Gearon becomes pregnant with her third child, the father’s name never even comes up. Yet, in this strictly feminine environment, some of the most startling observations come from Gearon’s unsentimental young son.

Celebrated photographer Tierney Gearon’s work has been labeled manipulative, disturbing, and even perverse. A former model and dancer, Gearon came to notorious fame in 2001 when photos of her own naked and masked children in the “I Am a Camera” show at London’s Saatchi Gallery had authorities threatening child pornography charges.

About Jack Youngelson

Jack Youngelson has worked as a writer, producer, and field producer on documentary projects that have been shown by numerous broadcasters in the United States and the UK. Over the past 5 years, he has collaborated as a writer/ producer with the award-winning production company, Moxie Firecracker Films, on various documentary projects, including Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival before being broadcast on HBO, and The Nazi Officerâs Wife, which screened at various international film festivals and had a theatrical release before its television premiere on A&E. That same year, Jack also wrote and produced Connecticut: Seasons of Light about the American Impressionist art movement. The film, narrated by Brian Dennehy, won a 2003 Regional Emmy for Outstanding Cultural Affairs Program. Jack graduated in 1990 from Princeton University.

About Peter Sutherland

Peter Sutherland was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Colorado. The move to New York City in 1998 prompted his first feature documentary, Pedal, a film about the cityâs bike messengers that premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2001 before airing on Sundance Channel. Along with numerous other television credits, Sutherland worked as a director of photography on Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, a documentary about

‘‘The Official Cover of The Film’’

a famous skateboarder convicted of murder. Directed by Helen Stickler, Stoked premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and was also released theatrically. Sutherland has published numerous photographic works through publishers such as powerhouse Books, Nieves, Art Beat Press, and P.A.M. books.

About the Documentary

The documentary follows Tierney over three years as she assembles her new body of work, a project that promises to be even more provocative than the photos that originally made her career.

The film documents an incredibly tumultuous period in Tierney’s life, from London to Los Angeles to have a third child at age 41. Tierney is famously reclusive and has always wanted her work to speak for itself, for her audience not to have any preconceived ideas about Part of the fascination of “Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project,” which runs at the Museum of Fine Arts as part of its “Art on Film” series, is that the documentary is so firmly planted at the intersection of - maybe that should be a collision between - artistic selfinvolvement and family.

Early in the film, Gearon confides that her mother is manicdepressive and schizophrenic. The older woman is a handful. “Are you going to pay me for my time, Tierney?” she asks as she poses. Still, the daughter’s description sounds like the sort of exaggerated complaint most adult children will make about a difficult parent. By the time the Mom confides that she’s the secret daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, we see what Gearon means.

Some of Tierney Gearon’s photos are very good, especially her portraits of her mother (who’s almost as striking in appearance as she is in behavior). But what the documentary makes plain is that photography isn’t really Gearon’s calling. It’s performance art - more specifically, multi-generational performance art. “When I do things, I do things full force,” she declares. There’s no doubt about that, nor about her mother’s willingness to participate (her occasional recalcitrance notwithstanding). It’s the children one wonders about - and fears for.

Shivam Kumar Sharma shivam@chiiz.com

Shivam is an engineer by degree, a writer by heart, and a photojournalist by dream. In his own words, “I was waging as a Design Engineer for a firm, but then, a “CHIIZ” happened to me, and thereafter, I started living my passionate dream.” photophilic_shivam