Paloma Tendero and Her Mother: Between a Loving Connection and Concerns Around Women’s Inherited Diseases

Spanish photographer Paloma Tendero explores her connection with her mother, along with the physicality and psychology of inherited traits and diseases in her series of photographs titled Mamá and Through Myself. 

These series juxtapose Tendero’s self-portraits with those of her mother. In doing so, she puts her relationship with her mother in the spotlight. She especially probes into how she has inherited her disease in a patriarchal society. A society which often overlooks women’s health care to the point of causing death, something that her pieces wish to shed light on as she reflects the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality and Good Health and Well-Being.

Through Myself, one of Tendero’s first photographic series, gives viewers a 'through the looking glass' effect. It uses frames as a window between parts of Tendero’s body and her mother’s. Where Tendero holds a frame, her mother’s body parts can be found peeking through instead. 

In an interview with Baltic Art Territory, Tendero shared that the series was a way for her to find a connection with her mother, especially through similarities in their physical attributes that run deep, down to the cellular and molecular level. 

“My mother and I share a genetic disorder – I have chronic kidney disease. In some works, I included the genetic view of what my mother and I share,” said Tendero.

Tendero’s mother eventually passed away because of the chronic illness; therefore, Tendero’s questions about the traits she had inherited from her mother became all the more urgent. The disease is Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD), a form of chronic kidney disease which reduces kidney function and can even lead to kidney failure.

Women with the disease are known to grow larger cysts due to their sex specific hormones. This introduces further complications in their road to recovery.

To make matters worse, the loss of Tendero’s mother to PKD is a grim reminder of women’s health inequity. The World Economic Forum chronicled in a 2023 article that European women spend most of their lives in poor health. A Harvard Health study also found that while 70 per cent of those affected by chronic pain are women, 80 per cent of pain research have instead been conducted on men.

Because of this, there exists a major gap in health diagnosis and treatments between women and men. A condition which has been exacerbating preventable diseases into life threatening ones.

The World Economic Forum charts that slow progress in the women’s health gap has been largely due to funding deficiency and a patriarchal stance that’s often taken when institutions conduct clinical research. The organization even outlined how women were only included in clinical trials in the late 1980s, a move that was only made mandatory in the United States in 1993.

Photographs like Tendero’s Through Myself help to advocate for equity in women’s health care.

Tendero’s Mamá later emerged as a more intimate version of Through Myself. Instead of juxtaposing her mother’s body parts with hers, in Mamá, Tendero collates her face with that of her mother’s. The impact of this piece is more immediate. Off the bat, viewers can pick up the similarities and differences between the two faces, enough to understand that they are looking at a pair of mother and daughter, who are inevitably bound for eternity.

In this piece, Tendero seems to admit that her face is also a container for the lived experiences of her mother, and a living testament as to the resilience of all the ancestors that came before her. There is a hope here that we can honour our women ancestors, by ensuring that future generations do not fall prey to the same patriarchal shackles.

Find out more about Paloma Tendero’s pieces by checking their Instagram on @palomatendero.