Amanda Mollindo, an ASU senior and passionate photographer, will showcase her thesis exhibition, “Young Mothers,” at the Modified Arts Gallery on Roosevelt and Fourth streets starting Friday.
“Young Mothers” is a dynamic collection of photographs, portraits, interviews and multimedia elements capturing Arizona women who had their children at a young age. Mollindo is inspired by her own experiences as the daughter of a teenage mother.
Mollindo, who was raised in Yuma, first discovered her passion for photography in high school when she took a photo class. She came up with the idea for her “Young Mothers” project in high school.
“I really fell in love with (photography),” Mollindo said. “I took two years in high school and then I came to ASU not intending to continue, but I ended up in a class related to photography. I found my way into the photo program and now I’m a photo major.”
The “Young Mothers” project sprouted in 2013.
“In my sophomore year, I was thinking about my honors thesis for Barrett, and it came back into my mind and I realized that it was really what I wanted to do,” Mollindo said.
To get started and to connect with young mothers and their families, Mollindo reached out to her network of family, friends, classmates, coworkers and local organizations. By sharing her unique experiences as the daughter of a teenage mother and being open about her goals for the project, she was able to establish a variety of connections with families throughout Arizona who were willing to be photographed and interviewed.
“I was mostly raised by my grandparents, so I have the perspective of having normal middle-aged parents, and then a mom who was 16,” Mollindo said. “I think it was why I was really interested in this project. I wanted to see how people handled motherhood.”
One of the goals of her exhibition is to go beyond the narrow, sensationalized view of teen pregnancy that is often glorified with programs like MTV’s “Teen Mom.” Mollindo wanted to share the stories of young women as they raise their children while growing up themselves and show the variety of experiences that families go through. To do this, she captured young mothers, their child or children and, in some cases, even their grandchildren, through portraits that offer a snapshot into their daily lives.
“What I really like about portraitures is they allow me to access people more than if I didn’t have a camera or if I just wanted to interview them,” Mollindo said. “I think people are a lot more interested in letting me in if I have a reason, and my reason is often photography.”
This project also gave Mollindo the chance to share the story of her and her mother. The exhibition includes a portrait of her and her mother, as well as her mother’s interview.
“It was really important that I included us in the project,” she said. “She’s really proud of me and she’s really excited for it. She’s so supportive of the project I think she knows how important it is, having been a young mother herself.”
Mollindo said she thoroughly enjoyed photographing the variety of families and children.
“There were so many different perspectives just because of the cultural medley that is here,” she said. “I really love working with the children. They are doing goofy stuff and playing, and I get a much more spontaneous image of them.”
Mollindo wants to show that, while having a family at a young age is life-changing, it doesn’t mean young women cannot make something of themselves.
“When you see a pregnant girl, she’s going to grow up and maybe she’s going to be able to make something of herself as long as she has what she needs,” she said.
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, Mollindo’s thesis co-director, agrees that the “Young Mothers” exhibition could offer a new perspective to its audience.
“I think that anyone going to the exhibition will find something they didn’t expect,” she said. “There’s a real humanity to her subjects.”
With gallery spaces at ASU booked for the spring, Mollindo approached the Modified Arts gallery about showing her work. By preparing an exhibition, she knew she would be able to share the stories of these young women with a larger audience.
“I love what they show and I love the gallery space itself,” Mollindo said. “I did go to pretty much all the galleries downtown that maybe might be willing to show an undergraduate student artist. They were the ones who were really interested in showing my work.”
There, she has been working with Kimber Lanning and Connor Descheemaker, who have encouraged her to try new things and add multimedia elements to her exhibition.
“Amanda has been excellent to work with,” Descheemaker said. “When she presented this idea to us, we saw a lot of promise. She really responded to all of our challenges to add multimedia elements to the show and more fully develop the concept. It’s been really cool to watch it evolve over time and see Amanda really rise to the occasion. She’s got a really good eye and I think that she’s always very willing to learn.”
Dove-Viebahn, who has been helping Mollindo think through her project since she began it in her sophomore year, is impressed with how far the project has come.
“She talked to me about the project, and it was just an idea then, and now it’s turned into this quite impressive documentation of these families and their lives,” she said. “She is very confident and understands what she’s doing with her work. She has a real sense of the importance of this work for other people, not just for her own career.”
An opening reception for “Young Mothers” will be held on Friday from 6-9 p.m., and the exhibition will remain open until until May 9.
Editor’s Note: Connor Descheemaker previously worked for the Downtown Devil. He did not contribute to the writing and editing of this article.
Contact the reporter at rbouley@asu.edu
