Parental Advisory

French multimedia artist Thomas Mailaender’s body of work is funny, offbeat, and darkly humorous. His focus often lies in documenting and addressing the strangeness of modern society, through what might otherwise be insignificant, incidentally farcical moments. ‘Parental Advisory’ is Mailaender’s sixth booklet of images collected from the Internet. For its subject he compiled a series of tragicomic and nail-biting, potentially hazardous situations involving parents and their children. We cringe at the sight of a child without a car seat, dangled by the ankles above raccoons, or tumbling headfirst. But we also smile smugly as a mom looks at her smartphone instead of her newborn baby.