One mum imagines...

I just looked up the artist through Google and got this:

"...[the imagges are from the] ... book, `When My Baby Dreams', is released by HarperCollins (it’s scheduled for January, 2012), but if you tune into today’s episode of The Today Show (that’s February 10th, for those of you keeping score), you might see Mila’s first big publicity hit and one unpublished daydream photo! Woohoo!"

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I came across these a while ago, towards the beginning of it going viral I guess, and thought it was just one of those little private blogs that people do, not anything that the mother was trying to GET or exploit or whatever. Went back to the blog, found out that she won't be posting the "daydreams" any more:

http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/2010/10/im-just-daydreamer.html

The end:

Quote:

So, no more Mila's Daydream pictures in the blog. I wanted to keep that first one there, because it means everything to me. The flowers she is picking are from that bouquet I got in hospital after giving birth. Well, I knew this was going to end some day anyway. I will continue taking photos every now and then, while Mila is still a baby, but this time I won't publish them at my blog, just to avoid misusage and violation. But this ain't the end of this blog either. I still want to be in touch with you people and share something from my maternity leave with you. So maybe this blog is going to be more like "While my baby is taking her nap, I try to blog about something." And sure there's going to be some creative things in the future too, let's see what we can come up. Maybe Mila is going to take pictures of me, or maybe I'll write some haiku's about her first words, or maybe there's going to be some other creative outbursts from my not-so-desperate housewife life. Mila is a great muse for sure.

As a little private blog, a creative mom trying to do something fun and creative while her baby sleeps, I think it's a great idea and I find the images to be really sweet.

She IS publishing a book of them. So that's another thing, and maybe takes it in another direction. Seems to be a happy baby though (in the non-sleeping pictures) and I just can't get too worked up about it.

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@sozobe,

It's now a book (see previous post) not JUST a blog and will be released in less than a year.

[Edit: oh, I see you know that now]

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@Ragman,

Right, I had already added that.

The point is that it started as a little blog -- I know so many people who have similar blogs, nobody is expecting anything will happen with them and usually nothing does.

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@sozobe,

Yeah...and as a photographer I only WISH I struck her kind of gold with any one of the dozens of ideas and portfolios I have. I really do like those images.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco wrote:

Re the photos, they make me uncomfortable in the extreme.

agreed

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@ehBeth,

I wonder how much of the uncomfortableness comes from the perception that the baby looks as dead as it does to be sleeping. I once met a woman who was a doll collector and she had some of those sleeping very real looking baby dolls - they looked dead to me and I found them to be creepy and not at all sweet.

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@Green Witch,

That makes sense.

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it's interesting, much better than that anne geddes crap

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@Green Witch,

That's EXACTLY it for me. I didn't want to come out and say it, but god forbid, that baby looks dead to me - except in the picture where she's actually yawning.

The process doesn't bother me - I truly don't enjoy looking at the product.
And it -the end product- actually does remind me of someone playing around with a doll or a puppet and producing a show or something.

I don't like the Anne Geddes stuff either - way too twee.
It's all just a little too cutesy-cutesy and staged and produced for my taste.

Now if she had a shot of the baby with her eyes open with the Indian-looking background and wrap (the deep blue) - I would LOVE that.

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@Green Witch,

I don't think that's it, as I find the Anne Geddes stuff pretty unpleasant as well. Eyes open/eyes closed. Doesn't matter to me.

I get an impression of someone using their child as a toy, and it makes my skin crawl a tiny bit.

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@vinsan,

A Clediment is not a result of my poor typing skills. It is a made-up word by Judy Chicago, a 70's artist who would use the "crap" laying about her life for some of her work. She called the crap"Clediments" I thought all artsy women used that term. Maybe not.

As far as my asserion that the kid will be in therapy. I found the pix kinda creepy aqnd they were manipulative. Does this set a pattern for a kids life of control by a "Smother"? Only time will tell

NO GODDAM WIRE HANGERS!!!

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@farmerman,

I don't know if someone with your typing record should attempt made up words*.

it confusles the rest of us...

*(mebbe an asterisk would help)

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@aidan,

Okay, I think this is the main problem. This is an actual photo from a Victorian baby's funeral. There is a sort of blending between sleep and death in both case here and I think it would make most people cringe:

http://cogitz.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/victorian-post-mortem-photography-baby-tm.jpg?w=252&h=400

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@Ragman,

I have a close friend who lived next to Wegman and testifies that he loved the dogs very much. I'm not all against him, I just had shimmies of discomfort on all that. I'm more adamant about people ridiculously dressing up their dogs to parade them.

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@sozobe,

But that's not my objection. It's baby usage that bothers me.

One of our fights at my old gallery was about a photographer's shot of a pubescent family member naked in a river, quite a beautiful photo. The child was ok with it being shown. I didn't think the child had the judgement to be ok with it. I didn't mind the photo being taken, but that the child was not old enough to ok its exhibition.

This is not the same situation, of course, but I get that usage feeling.

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@farmerman,

Hah, you got me there, on clediments.

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@ossobuco,

Yeah.

It bothers me less with babies because they're so generic when they're little. You can't look at a picture of a baby and say "why that looks so much like my co-worker!" the way you can with kid pictures. (As in, down the line, after the kid has become an adult.)

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Well, I for one think it's wonderful!

Such adventures this baby has had!

I find in charming and enchanting that a mother envisions her child in such loving compositions.

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@ossobuco,

Yes, Wegman was the first time I (and perhaps others) saw that sort of issue raised in that way about pets. Perhaps the dogs were exhibitionists? Whereas with the baby, they're just plain asleep and unaware, theoretically. Not much of an adventure for the baby when they have no awareness of what is happening. On a different but related note, I also shudder when I see a baby on one of those pet leashes.

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