Alumnus Alice Proujansky's (NYU Tisch, 2002) documentary photo project, Women's Work, was featured as a story and slideshow in the NY Times Lens Blog. The work features fellow alumnus Petrushka Bazin Larsen (NYU Tisch, 2004) as a subject in several photos.
When Alice Proujansky was pregnant with her first child, a man at a party came up to her and remarked, “You’ll never want to go back to work when you see those baby’s eyes.” Ms. Proujansky doesn’t remember her reply. “Probably something like, ‘Well, I doubt that will happen,’ ” she said. “Documentary photography isn’t exactly the kind of career people are lukewarm about or just fall into and out of. And my children’s eyes are beautiful, but they won’t pay my student loan bills either!”
Yet that offhand comment — although perhaps meant harmlessly — spoke to one of her biggest fears. At 32, Ms. Proujansky had finally established herself as a documentary photographer. She worried that having a child would erase an identity she had worked so hard to achieve.
“It was really a complicated and shocking experience to suddenly have to negotiate these different identities as a mother, as a worker, as an individual,” she said.
One way she came to terms with her dual roles as photographer and mother was by photographing other working moms. In April 2013 she reached out to several women in a variety of fields who kept their jobs and took care of their young children.
Click here to see the full article and slideshow on the NY Times Lens Blog.
Alice Proujansky received her BFA at NYU Tisch Photography and Imaging in 2002. In addition to her documentary work, Alice has taught photography to
at-risk young people and their teachers since 2002 and currently
coordinates educational partnerships for On Sight, Aperture’s community programs initiative. Her first book, Go Photo! will be published by Aperture in May 2016. Read about her experiences teaching middle school photography: Middle School As Seen Through The Eyes Of A Teacher’s Cell Phone. Follow her on Instagram @aliceproujansky.