Abstract

The text is an interpretation of three photography projects made by Terry Richardson, Melanie Manchot and Evergon Lunt. Actually the topic of analyze is a relation between the parent and adult child, who is at the same time an artist. All of the photographers asked their mothers to take part in their projects concerning nakedness. This transgression of cultural taboo seems to be an important sign and also identity question. The article is based on ideas of Michel de Certeau and Paul Ricoeur, who points relations between closeness and alienation. The artists construct, de-construct and re-construct the history of family, the rules of family life and also they query the role of individual human being in a society. The term “tactic”is used here in a Michel de Certeau way of understanding this word. It means that tactic is an individual form of using already existing institutions, traditions or practices in a more personal or communal sense. Artistic practices are ways of parasitizing on main-stream culture strategies or psychological/psychoanalytical mechanisms. Tactics are like games, however game is not just postmodern play but also an area of discussing problems of relations between objectivity, freedom and attitude toward mother as the other, very specific other- the other who has been already in a very specific symbiotic relation with her child.