Breakwater

Hanna Wolf

2017 – Ongoing — Canada

About this series

Breakwater  is a self-portraiture series that began in 2017, following the birth of my second child. What started as a therapeutic exploration of the transformative experience of motherhood has evolved into a deeply personal reflection on identity, loss, and resilience.
The work serves as a way to process these formative years. As the years pass, the images include a response to isolation, miscarriage, and the grief of loss during the pandemic. In 2022, the series took another shift, capturing the emotional complexity of navigating pregnancy after loss and the raw, visceral experience of my daughter’s near-fatal birth.
The images are arranged non-sequentially, reflecting the fluidity of these experiences. Often depicted alone, the photographs speak to the weight of this role and its profound influence on selfhood, offering a reflection of how motherhood has shaped my experience of living in the world.

Photographer: Hanna Wolf
Nationality: Canadian
Based in: Nova Scotia, Canada
Website: hannawolf.com
Instagram: @hannawolfphoto

Hanna Wolf (b.1985) is a British-Canadian photographic artist based in the Annapolis Valley, Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia). Inspired by the connections between parents and children, her work investigates themes of memory, familial archives, and the relationship between identity, belonging, and acts of care.
Hanna has recently been named a winner of Female in Focus 2024 (British Journal of Photography) & the LensCulture Critics’ Choice Awards (2024). She is a Royal Photographic Society IPE166 Exhibitor (Saatchi Gallery, 2025). Her work was shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize (2024), the Head On Portrait Awards (2024 & 23) & the Royal Photographic Society IPE 165 (2023).