NONFICTION - April 7, 1996

OUR MOTHERS: Portraits by 72 Women Photographers, edited by Viviane Esders. (Stewart Tabori & Chang: $29.95; 160 pp.) Photographers, practiced in the art of revealing, here reveal for us their relationships with their mothers. Annie Liebovitz’s portrait of her parents (above left), taken on their 50th wedding anniversary; Janine Niepce’s mother (below); a photo Mary Ellen Mark saved but did not take of her mother (below left, on ostrich); Sheila Metzner’s mommie dearest photo of her mother (upper right); and Marilyn Nance’s portrait of her mother, Savannah, who agreed that it made her look like Harriet Tubman (lower right) are only a few from this collection. Some are more painful than others, and even the most straightforward portraits are complicated.