I donate 50 percent of all proceeds from online sales of my prints to the Stephen Lewis Foundation, a Canadian organization that helps to ease the pain of HIV/AIDS in Africa by funding community-level projects that provide care and support to women, orphans, grandmothers and people living with AIDS.
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I first picked up photography in 1998 when I dropped out of school for a year and bought an old, second-hand 35 mm Yashica. For a few years my camera and I were inseparable, but after I graduated with an English degree and started working full-time, it fell away.
Becoming a mother in 2006 changed everything. Before that, I had become a government drone who just went to work and came home to watch television in between panic and agoraphobia attacks, lacking any real critical engagement with the world. (What happened to that angry, idealistic university student???) With motherhood, everything became more intense and important, and suddenly I had something to say. I picked up the camera again and haven’t stopped since.
My work was exhibited in Mother/mother-* in New York City and will be included in The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art, due to come out in fall 2010.
I think photographs should make you wonder.
~ Kate Wilhelm
Guelph, Ontario
Email me at kate(at)peripheralvision(dot)ca
Curated group shows
Mother/mother-, A.I.R. Gallery, New York City.
December 2009
still standing, Alma Gallery, Guelph, Ontario.
April-May 2009
Publications
The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art. Ed. by Myrel Chernick and Jennie Klein, Demeter Press, Fall 2010.
“Lunenburg Invasion” Deep Sleep Magazine, Issue 2