A Mother and Daughter’s Joint Becoming

In the course of the project, as Barbara grew older, Wywrot’s photographs became more collaborative, and more humorous, with mother and daughter messing around, staging scenes together. Wywrot told me that when her own creative energy collided with Barbara’s, a “fever would take over” and she’d go fetch her camera. One of the last images in the book, a double self-portrait in a mirror, is the only photograph that shows both Barbara and Wywrot looking straight at the viewer. Barbara’s expression is defiant. Her arms are crossed. Wywrot holds the camera, her gaze neutral. When I asked mother and daughter about the picture over the phone, they conferred for a while in Polish. They had been visiting Wywrot’s parents in America, and had just got into a spat with them. Both women were feeling a bit like teen-agers, Barbara said: “We went to our room and locked ourselves in the bathroom and took this photograph.”

Last March, Barbara, now twenty-two, moved into her own apartment in Kraków, a ten-minute bike ride from her mother’s. This chapter of “Pestka” is over. Wywrot said, of Barbara’s leaving the nest, “Oh, it was so difficult, but it was necessary. I’m so proud of her. I’m happy that she is so talented, so intelligent, that she’s beautiful.” Barbara added, “I’m sure it was more painful for Mom than for me. That’s how motherhood works, I guess.”