"In my latest project, Mothers and Daughters, I portray the complex and sometimes challenging relationship between a mother and her daughter. It is both documentary and biographical in nature, as it also illustrates memories of my and my two sisters' relationships with our mother, and even our mother's relationship with her mother. 

I chose to work with real mother and daughter pairs in their own environment, rather than with models or actors, I only needed to orchestrate the sitters moderately to show the essense of their emotional bond. They created their own small world together, at the same time, through the staging of the scene, reviving my memories of my own's family's relationships.

"As the project grew in shape, form and content, I related to twenty different mother and daughter pairs, with their very varied, sometime ultra-sensitive relationships, and realised again how much the fragility and vulnerability of the female is exposed fully in the mother-daughter bond.

Over passage of time it changes significatly. The babe-in-arms is fully dependent of the mother, but at the other end of the age scale, the mother often becomes dependent on her daughter to satisfy her emotional needs. 

In the adult relationship the intimacy of the bond is established by love, struggle and the rivalry of a shared lifetime, leading to a mature understanding and acceptance of each other. Between childhood and adulthood, the full spectrum of emotions is played out. My images try to capture all of these very different stages in this extremely special and complicated reality".

The viewer looks at the image only casually, but then is impelled to look at it closer. Not once, not twice, but several times. The now animated viewer finds his curiosity increases with every examination. He sees more nuances in the content, he admires the subtlety of the colours and questions how the photographer has achieved that stunning cinematic effect. 

Multiple award-winning photographer, Julia Fullerton-Batten, creates fine-art images that hung in galleries throughout the world, from Abu Dhabi to China. Her images are held in permanent collections in The National Portrait Gallery, London and the Musee de l' Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland.

www.juliafullerton-batten.com