Lulu Schneider

Why didn’t I recognize my mother? centers reenacted stories and inherited artifacts from the artist’s mother and her recollections of childhood. Through an array of performative gestures, the project represents Schneider’s effort to understand her mother’s lineage while preserving histories that risk disappearance. In several vignettes, she re-stages events from her mother’s and uncle’s pasts, inhabiting their narratives as lived materials rather than distant accounts. The resulting photographs honor, preserve, and mourn these histories. The project acknowledges that while the artist cannot directly access her mother’s past, she can tend to her memories through acts of embodied care.

Lulu Schneider is a photographer working across fashion, portraiture, and still life. Her work features staged colorful scenes that explore repulsion and the forming, keeping, and losing of human connection.