In April 2007 I invited MOTHERS of all kinds to come and be photographed at Thistle Hall, Cuba St, Wellington. Over 100 women and their children came. At the end of four days of photographing, I taped one photograph of each women to the gallery wall and had an exhibition.

As well as photographing the women, I got them to fill in a PROUST questionnaire, the questions of which I tailored specifically towards the theme of motherhood. The answers this huge variety of women gave were fascinating. The questionnaires were taped to the wall alongside the photographs.

The photographs that follow are the series I call the ROUGH CUT - photographs I chose quickly and printed roughly in the 4 hours between the end of photographing and the beginning of the exhibition opening! [Rough, hasty and raw, that's the way I like it!] The exhibition ran for three days and over 250 people came to see these diverse, interesting, curious MOTHERS.

A big thank-you to all the wonderful women who let me photograph them, and who wrote their wonderful answers to the questionnaire. You gave me so much material to work with that a year and a half later, I'm still wrestling with the final form I want the words and photographs to take. And yeah, I know these shots are so bloody far away from glamorous! The best I can say to console you is that I view the photographs as self-portraits - they're my attempt to clarify for myself my feelings about this huge big large thing that is being a mother. Best wishes. Fleur