15 Photos That Show The Intimate Relationship Between Mothers & Daughters

"Women are expected to be emotionally available, soft, and tender — and yet, all these attributes are deemed signs of weakness," says photographer Samantha Conlon as she explains the inspiration behind her most recent project, Daughters. "The project’s concept and the conversation around softness and intimacy can only exist in relation to its opposite: masculinity," she adds, speaking directly to a major theme throughout her work.

As a member of the Bunny Collective, an all-female artist collective that spans countries, Conlon strives to present her audience with realistic, courageous, and alternative images of femininity. "I started a body of work called Girl As Weapon a few months before [starting Daughters], which was looking into a way of subverting the typical archetypes of femininity: softness, pink, etc...After a good few months of working on that, I felt like I needed to look at the positive aspects femininity and get away from the anger for a while."

This desire to continue to challenge depictions of women and girls, but in a more intimate way, is what led Conlon to spending the weekends with her sisters and their daughters, photographing them through their everyday lives. After six months of quiet observation, Conlon produced a series of images that are at once voyeuristic and confrontational. They depict moments in the lives of these women that seem inconsequential. Nevertheless, the viewer understands their importance.

Click through for the rest of the series and more from Conlon on her process.