— Alex Ward on Tierney Gearon for The Heavy Collective.

— Alex Ward on Tierney Gearon for The Heavy Collective.

What does it feel like to inhabit a human body, to have your own children, to take amusement at the present whilst seeing links to the past, to contemplate the history of women and men and family, to expose the stark morality of symbols versus the lottery of paradoxes in the people you love? The answer of course doesn’t exist in words, not really. It’s all a question of personal experience, but how easily others relate to the evidence of your experience might have something to do with the strength of Tierney Gearon’s photography.

Based in Los Angeles, Gearon did not start out with the traditional background in art school or college. A career first in front of the lens as a model, and then behind it as a fashion photographer for many years prepared Gearon to take on her own journey and create something around her true ambition - not to be famous in the fashion world or an art scene, but to be a mother. That she found critical and popular recognition through depicting her feelings about that desire seems a practical extension of her resume.

Gearon’s ‘I Am A Camera’, 'Motherhood’ and 'Explosure’ series are all autobiographical in nature and include family members, friends and self portraits. Whilst not 'set up’ exactly, there are elements of playing with an outcome in each and Gearon sometimes gives her subjects props to play with or uses double exposure to create new meanings or questions. One photograph in 'Explosure’ layers a bull with its four legs bound over that of a nude man in the foetal position. The similarity in form and colour might evoke thoughts of a connection between the human and the animal condition, both seen vulnerable in the one image. Alongside these two troubled beings, a baby boy walks free and naked, ignorant of the brutish struggle to come.