My Son and I at the Same Height
One of the artists exhibiting 14th Feb – 25th April 2026 with the Centre for Contemporary Photography (Melbourne) is (Annie) Hsiao-Ching Wang with her wonderful exhibition My Son and I at the Same Height (2002–2024). The work involved taking portraits of herself and her son every year from 2002.
One key captivating aspect of her suite of photographic portraits is that she has ensured that her son and herself appear at the same height. She also has the exhibition hung so that the top of their heads are always the same distance to the floor – hence the up and down of the line of photographs.
Once you understand this, the fun starts as you take in her efforts to make this happen.
In the first half, the son is perched on something but once he gets older, it is the mother who now stands on something to keep their heights the same. The photograph above top is an image taken when they were of the same height.
Above: The wall of all photographs by Annie Wang
Above: The first photographs – with mother holding her baby son to the same height.
Above: more early photos of mother holding her baby son to the same height – son on a wall and on a chair.
Above: Above photo of son on step; then on a rock (almost same height) and then the change-over (same as image at top of this page) mother and son now same height.
Above: Now the mother stands on a low wall; then she stands on a rock.
Above: Final photographs in this set – mother standing on upper step on escalator, on step and on a low wall.
Above: The final set of the photographs by Annie Wang
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wall text reads:
My Son and I at the Same Height 2002 – 2024
In 2002, Annie Wang started recording her own personal, familial history – a photograph capturing important moments each year of her and her son. With height as a reference point Wang found settings and scenarios where she and her son could be at the same height. Recording this systematic approach also revealed the subtle changes every year brought, both physically and in the mother-son relationship.
The first image, an inadvertent moment of a mother helping her small child walk along a wall, sparked the idea and the artist became fixated on the idea of a series of images “at the same height”, and as time passed the artist became more interested in how these images talk of gender roles in Taiwan, a society “mired by traditional patriarchal values”, as Wang describes.
A simple start has produced a powerful collaborative series of self-portraits that have allowed Wang to process the inequality and limitations placed on women, her own changed roles as artist and mother and the life stories and moments she has shared with her son.
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Comment:
These photographs are a positive celebration of her motherhood that changed over time and how that relationship with her son changed as he grew to be a young adult. All the while she has worked to herself and her son at the same height!
When I read text above referencing gender roles and patriarchal values it was a puzzle having spent time making my way back and forth along the line of images and enjoying the tableau in each photograph.
Then I looked through Hsiao-Ching Wang’s 2009 PhD thesis: Sustaining the creative identity of a Taiwanese artist during motherhood: a sequence of six artworks within an installation.
In this she researched and interrogated complex matters relating to Taiwanese women and mothers as creators. There are six sets of works involved with her research. Once I had finished looking through her thesis, the connection between this work at the CCP exhibition, My Son and I at the Same Height (2002–2024) and her statements about gender roles and patriarchal values made sense.
But, to anyone looking at the exhibition here in 2026 in Melbourne may strain to see the link to the topic of her 2009 thesis.
The work very much has a life of its own now and is open to interpretations by those who get along to the exhibition at Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn Arts Centre, City of Boroondara (Melbourne).
My recommendation is to see this work – part of Familial exhibition staged by the Centre for Contemporary Photography till Saturday 25th April 2026.
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More about (Annie) Hsiao-Ching Wang
Mother as creator (another site)
The Getty: at same height