In “Mutters Schuhe” (engl. mothers shoes) Nina Röder shows three distinct perspectives of her mother’s youth: her mother’s, her grandmother’s, and her own. Röder highlights self-reflective moments in her mother’s life, like her prom and her education as a hairdresser, in order to explore how subjectivity and perspective affect the retelling of memories.
This work suggests that emotions and time can trigger a metamorphosis which alters our perceptions of certain memories. Röder questions how her mother sees herself in her memories, which emotions correspond to which memories, and how her emotions have changed over time. She also ponders how her grandmother remembers these moments in her daughter‘s life and how she feels about them. Finally, Röder considers how much she herself knows about these memories.
These questions are approached through performative experminents rather than through an explanation of the complex metamorphosis of memories in general. The photos were shot in old rooms in Röder’s mother’s childhood home in the Franconian province. The clothes the three women are wearing are orignial clothes that belonged to Röder’s mother and are narratively connected to each referenced moment.