Bertha Alyce: Mother exPosed

Gay Block began photographing her mother, Bertha Alyce, in 1973 and continued until Bertha Alyce's death resulting from a stroke in 1991. This collection of Block's photographs (some of which involve nudity) presents her complicated, and at times difficult, relationship with her mother and a mother-daughter quest for healing. This intensely personal and intimate account could easily be a reflection of any family today. Essays by Eugenia Parry, author of Crime Album Stories: Paris 1886-1902, and Kathleen Stewart Howe, former curator of the University of New Mexico Museum, accompany the photographs. The award-winning DVD "Bertha Alyce" is included.

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Review by Jo Ann Callis

Bertha Alyce is a book about a daughter/photographer's career-long intense struggle, through photographs and video, to reconcile her relationship with her mother. Photographing Bertha Alyce from 1973 until her death in 1991, Gay Block has given us a book that is ultimately about redemption and forgiveness.

This book is so rich that it makes one want to drink it in and hold on for awhile. It is deep, troubling, and intensely human. The role of the photographer is touching throughout: all the characters are portrayed with compassion and identification. Myriad issues are touched on: beauty, desire, and class; feminism and women's need to be pleasing; power and domination; face-lifts and strokes and whose breasts are prettier; women's rivalry; mother-daughter rivalry; the control ideology and culture has over us. Block deals with all of these issues with grace and tact. This book is funny, like Jewish humor, often painfully so. I'm amazed that it is all integrated without bludgeoning the content. I often had to stop and look closely to know what Block was doing because everything is not obvious: as a reader I was asked to make leaps which left me room to feel my own experiences in intimate relationships.

When I say reader I'm not inferring the text is more than the pictures because this is a book of photographs that are to be read. It is a brilliantly laid-out, beautifully designed picture book with the text so crucially and carefully integrated.

Both essays, by Eugenia Parry and Kathleen Howe are valuable and enrich the book.