The course notes mention four photographers who look at family portraiture outside of its traditional framework. Here is a brief summary of each:
Sally Mann
Mann is an American photographer who has mainly concentrated on taking pictures of her own family and of the area where she lives (Lexington, Virginia). I hadn’t come across her work before but a search on her website led me to Family Pictures, a series of intimate black and white photographs shot between 1984 and 1991 where Mann has documented her growing family, warts and all. I have read that Mann was criticised for photographing her children nude and I certainly felt uncomfortable when first viewing them but I then realised that these images were shot over twenty years ago when photographing children, even your own family, did not raise the issues that it does now. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and Mann’s images do take me back to remembering a childhood that was certainly more innocent and carefree than nowadays. I think my take-away from this series, apart from a feeling of nostalgia, is Mann’s eye for form and beauty in the human body, taking often unconventional images to reflect this.
I found her book featuring one of her earlier works At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women (Mann, 1988) in my local library. Mann took portraits of twelve-year old girls from her local community, addressing the theme of adolescence, a time when children want less involvement with adults and to explore their own freedom, often with conflicting emotions. The images are all posed and many of them are quite dark in character, with the children looking straight into the camera often with sullen and sometimes threatening expressions. Mann has captured the awkwardness of the nearly-teen but I do prefer the apparent naturalness of her Family Pictures series where the poses seem less contrived.
Elinor Carucci
Carucci’s work focuses on her relationship with her immediate family. Her images are taken close-up, with tight framing and an often dramatic use of light, and are an intimate way of recording how she sees the world.
In her series Closer we see three generations of her family, including herself and her husband as well as her parents, and her images show the sensual pleasures of life such as touching, embracing, bathing as well the vulnerability of flesh – scars, careworn skin – and the seeking of female identity. Although there is nudity, it is not that explicit and intimate moments are often hinted at – we know we are seeing private moments but are spared the graphic detail.
In Mother we see close-up intimate moments between mother and child, highlighting the private bond between them and revealing the frankness and innocence of a small child. Although candid and occasionally repulsive in their honesty, Carucci’s images give a very personal insight into motherhood, showing both the joys and frustrations with her use of shadows also hinting at the latter at times.
Whilst some of Carucci’s images are bit too frank for my taste, I do like most of her work and she has shown me how close-up portraiture can produce artistic and evocative images.
Richard Billingham – ‘Ray’s a Laugh’
Billingham is best known for his frank and candid look at his dysfunctional family in the body of work ‘Ray’s a Laugh’, a collection of images depicting the negative aspects of various family members.
Whilst some may find these to be powerful and poignant photographs, I find them uncomfortable viewing to be honest as I am not a fan of images that mock people. There are obvious comparisons to be made with the work of Martin Parr and Peter Dench, both of whom look at the less-attractive side of the English, although neither of these photographers as far as I know has looked to their own family for inspiration.
Compiled between 1990 and 1996, Billingham used a snapshot style of shooting to record documentary-style subjects presented as a family album with no accompanying text (the images are pretty self-explanatory). While this work is really a biography of his family, I see it also as autobiographical, a record of six years of Billingham’s life as a young man in his early twenties so I wonder whether shooting this series acted as some form of catharsis for him.
When looking at the images in Ray’s a Laugh I felt that I really got to know his family, even if I didn’t really want to. The transference of the subject’s personality by the photographer to the viewer, the establishment of a connection, is something I would like to achieve in my own work, so it is this that I take away from this piece of Billingham’s work, even if in this instance I don’t like the way he has done it.
Tierney Gearon
A lot of Gearon’s personal work revolves around her friends and family and for this exercise I looked at her body of work The Mother Project, the subject of which was her elderly mother’s struggle with mental illness and how this affected the lives of Gearon and her children. Although Gearon has been strongly criticised in the past for purportedly exploiting her children by photographing them naked (Gearon, 2001), I found her ‘The Mother Project’ images to be very personal and poignant, their playful tone, colour and vibrancy contrasting with the sadness of the situation.
This is another example of a piece of personal work that has been cathartic to the photographer; Gearon ‘describes her pictures as a form of therapy – a means of healing herself’ (Jordanville Films, n.d.) and I can see that she has used the project to explore the relationship between herself, her mother and her children. I do wonder though where the line is between Gearon’s role on one hand as mother/daughter and as a photographer on the other; at times this seems to me to be distinctly blurred and also makes me ask whether Gearon’s project was as beneficial to her subjects, in particular her children, as it appears to have been to her.
Conclusion:
Mann, Carucci, Billingham and Gearon are four photographers who have looked at family portraiture in different ways outside of its traditional expectations. Very personal pieces of work in all cases, some I am more comfortable with than others. This research has taught me not to be afraid to explore with my work, to look at different ways of seeing things and then choosing the best way to communicate them. I’ve also realised, or rather re-confirmed to myself, that I am quite conservative in my photographic views and approach to certain subjects and that I am not comfortable ‘pushing the envelope’ photographically, particularly with regards to people and what might be considered offensive or in bad taste. So I think it is a case of finding my own personal balance between exploring new areas and pushing my creative boundaries whilst remaining true to myself and my values.
References:
Carucci, E. Closer [online images]. Elinor Carucci. Available from http://www.elinorcarucci.com/closer.php#0 [accessed 07 January 2015]
Carucci, E. Mother [online images]. Elinor Carucci. Available from http://www.elinorcarucci.com/mother.php#0 [accessed 07 January 2015]
Gearon, T. (n.d.) The Mother Project [online images]. Tierney Gearon Photography. Available from http://www.tierneygearon.com/exhibitions/the-mother-project/the-mother-project-gallery/ [accessed 13 January 2015]
Gearon, T. (2001) Where is the sex? [online]. The Guardian. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/mar/13/childprotection [accessed 12 January 2015]
Jordanville Films (n.d.) Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project [online]. The Mother Project.com. Available from http://www.themotherproject.com/MP_PressKit.pdf [accessed 09 January 2015]
Mann, S. (1984 – 1991) Family Pictures [online images]. Sally Mann. Available from http://sallymann.com/selected-works/family-pictures [accessed 27 November 2014]
Mann, S. (1988) At Twelve: Portraits of Young Women. New York: Aperture Foundation Inc.
Context and Narrative 