There’s always something new on the horizon; being a mother is all about embracing the ever-changing challenges of motherhood. My journey as a mum first inspired the creation of “sTRAPPED” in 2016 (http://www.picspirations.sg/alexandrianeoh). Two years on, the challenges have evolved as my little one - now a toddler, is often on her feet, and naturally seeking independence.
One of the biggest challenges in raising children today is dealing with the outside influences of society. Sometimes the instinctive reaction is to protect and shelter our children from these harmful forces that seem beyond our realm of control. The hardest thing is to do sometimes, is to let go, and allow our children to fall, so that they may pick themselves up again.
Now free from the restraints of the pram, she is able to fully explore her surroundings - running, jumping, climbing, playing - effectively learning and growing.
As she continues to discover this new world, will she be taken in by a new distraction, that will imprison her once more?
In caring for our children, there is sometimes a fine line between watching out for them and being overly restrictive. I constantly struggle with these notions. There is a danger of relying too much on the deluge of information that bombards us in today’s digitized world, instead of following our parental instincts. Societal expectations weigh heavily down on us as well. Jean Piaget (1920) believed that children construct their knowledge about the world in response to experiences within their environment. What is our role as parents in our children’s development?
Before 1800, babies were seldom carried outside of the home. In the mid-1800s, the pram, a Western phenomenon, became a practical means of transportation with the introduction of pavement in urban areas. The pram provided women with greater mobility as they were liberated from their homes.
Today, the pram is among the most common means of transporting babies. The evolution of the use of prams reflects broad cultural changes concerning urbanization, social development and changing views of childhood and parenthood.
Why do you choose to use a pram?
This series was completed as part the NOISE Singapore 2016 Art Mentorship (Photography) and was part of the group exhibition - Between Home and Home (2017) at Objectifs.
This series is a part of the larger project of "A Picspiration A Day 2014". I began this personal project in January 2014, when a friend challenged me to commit to taking a single photo each day, using my iPhone, for my Instagram feed. What started out as a friendly challenge, eventually became a desire to use photography to capture everyday happenings and objects that we might often overlook, in order that others may come to appreciate the beauty of little things. In this series, I captured the expressions of friends and colleagues and superimposed them with nature or daily scenes, to bring to light the seeds of hope and love within each of our lives, and how intertwined and connected our humanly lives are with our surroundings.
This fruit series is a part of the larger project of "A Picspiration A Day 2014". I began this personal project in January 2014, when a friend challenged me to commit to taking a single photo each day, using my iPhone, for my Instagram feed. What started out as a friendly challenge, eventually became a desire to use photography to capture everyday happenings and objects that we might often overlook, in order that others may come to appreciate the beauty of little things.