SARAH SUDHOFF

Supply and Demand

Over the last fifteen years my work has consistently interwoven themes of gender, science, and personal experience. I am fascinated by topics that seem at first commonplace and ordinary. Yet through photography – both staged and found -- I highlight our lack of understanding of such familiar subject matter.

In 2013, my work turned to breastfeeding. The politics of breastfeeding has recently become a contentious subject, fueling strong emotions, as well as a host of new scientific studies and reports in the press. In early 2013, I created a video documenting a private performance involving frozen breast milk, entitled Surrender. My work stemmed from my inability to produce enough milk for my then-young son. The milk serves as both subject and a metaphor for the feelings of loss and failure that I and so many other mothers have experienced. My work, then, explores a political question through the lens of deeply felt bodily experience.

The intersection of abstract, statistical investigation and affective presentation underpins the way in which breastfeeding is both highly medicalized and yet undeniably personal in contemporary American culture.