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Family matters
Family photographs represent the one occasion when everyone gets hands-on with photography, whether that be in the making or in the viewing thereof. And more often than not we are involved in both. It is a prime reason for buying a camera and using it. Even photographers take family photos; some become acclaimed for it and there are several of these featured here, from Jacques Henri Lartigue to Richard Billingham. For several the family lies at the heart of their practice - the aforementioned, plus Mann, Meatyard, Nixon (not always his own family) and so on - and it is interesting to compare their work with that from photographers better known for genres as diverse as hard hitting documentary, fashion and fine art. The photographers that appear in this book are mostly fairly well known and many are famous, with the exception of steelworker George Albert Newton Smith, father of Graham. Graham Smith, now an acclaimed photographer, rescued his dad’s negatives from the bin after the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, and what for him are childhood memories on the other side of the camera are his contribution to this book. One of Smith Senior’s family photographs has been chosen for the cover (above, Graham centre). Most, but by no means all, of the 56 featured photographers are still alive, which makes a change for a survey of the medium. None the less the selection does range in period from Julia Margaret Cameron to Juergen Teller. The biographies that follow the plates are informative and relate the chosen images to the work of the featured photographer, and they are well worth dipping into even if you are very familiar with the ‘day job’ oeuvre. Not as ambitious in scale nor as formally regimented as The Family of Man, but probably closer to a true definition, at least so far as photographers’ families go.
Family: Photographers Photograph their Families, edited by Sophie Spencer-Wood, is published by Phaidon, £24.95, ISBN 0-7148-4402-0.
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