Family photography isn’t necessarily your immediate family. It could be about a specific lifestyle or a group that you are involved in everyday. Family photography doesn’t limit you to only being able to explore your own family but as an insider the shots may come out more natural and real as the people in them will be more comfortable with you and won’t be phased by the snap of the camera. You have complete access to your own family all of the time and you are able to make images whenever you want, at an event or even when you are just hanging out with one another and sharing normal everyday experiences’.
Richard Billingham [Ray’s A Laugh]
Richard Billingham [Ray’s A Laugh]
Laia Abril [The Epilogue]
A film: The Genius of Photography Episode: We Are Your Family
– images are more raw and real to grab spectators reactions making them think more widely
– photographs in the 1930s were about making celebrities look ‘devine’. Here some photographers rebelled against this, it was becoming outdated. Tony Vaccaro, an American photographer, took photos to show his own opinions and not to express the thoughts or opinions of the celebrity or the model he photographs. 0
– photographs should be about the person’s personality and characteristics not the face or visual aspects of a person.
– photographs are made to tell a story, true to the person’s life
Tony Vaccaro
Tony Vaccaro [born 1922 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania]Vaccaro is an American war photographer during the Second World War and between the years of 1944 and 1945, shortly after becoming a renowned fashion and lifestyle photographer for US magazines. He spent the early years of his life living in Italy.
Vaccaro tended to take action shots while doing documentary photography as he saw them to be the most raw. He did not like when subjects would try to pose for him essentially staging who they actually are. Only when the wall has gone and the subject actually allows Vaccaro in to a piece of who they actually are will he make a photograph. All of his documentary images were made using a film camera as at the time of when he did documentary photography digital cameras had not been invented yet.
“I’m gonna buy a camera, learn how to use it, and show the world the real pictures of the war.” -Tony Vaccaro
This film is about what Vaccaro went through during the war. It is a documentary film with guest appearances who comment on what he went through. The film itself has not been released yet.
Larry Clark
Larry Clark [born 1943 in Tulsa, Oklahoma]Clark is an American photographer. His photographs are natural. He does documentary photographer as an insider and is part of the community he is photographing and so has an insight to reality within their group of people and those in his images wouldn’t shy away from the camera or try to be anything other than themselves. His book ‘Tulsa’ was very personal and showed his community of friends and family as who they truly were and did not fabricate a lie of who they all wanted to be portrayed as.
“Once the needle goes in, it never comes out” – Larry Clark
Nan Goldin [born 1953 in Washington, D.C.]Goldin is best known for her images of her friends and her self portraits. She would often make images with herself in them showing her life as a victim of physical harm from her partner as well as making images of a lot of her transvestite friends. Goldin only ever makes images of her dear friends as she knows them and allows them to pick which images they like and those that aren’t so good. Photography is very personal to her and having an insight to her friends lives, as well as her own, is one of the best ways to make real images. Goldin does confession photography, photographing real people within her community of friends. She calls trans people the “third gender”, they are treated as outcasts in the way they are treated and by the way they act.
“You can only really photograph your own tribe” – Nan Goldin
Family photography becomes more like a diary and is very personal. Goldin was inspired by film with how she presents her work, which she does through slide shows of her images put together with music in the background. She believes in being “fully present in the moment” but at the same time to “be there and get lost at the same time”. She also used film cameras to make her photographs making the images raw and real to the time and the actual events.
[Nobuyoshi] Araki
Araki [born 1940 in Tokyo. Japan]Araki is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He has created over 350 books and is still going. Araki often created work of a very sexual nature with some even calling it pornography. He made a book called Sentimental Journey while on his honeymoon with his wife, this is now a very famous book.
“taking these photos does help me to remember” – Araki
“The very private became the very public” – anonymous
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Sally Mann
Sally Mann [born 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, VA]Sally Mann is a documentary photographer that focuses on her family and often collaborates with family members in order to make her images. Here they will pose for her and allow her to make images of them whenever she needs to. She would large black and white photographs of her young children and then later making images of landscapes representing decay and death within the environment.
“unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.” – Sally Mann
Larry Sultan [born 1946 in Brooklyn, New York City]Larry Sultan is an American photographer with exhibits of his work across the U.S. making images of his family. A lot of his work is very personal but is also staged as he would often ask the subject to dress in a certain way and look at the camera in a specific way to portray them in the way that he wants them to be portrayed.
” photography is instrumental in creating family” – Larry Sultan
Often images reflect the photographer rather than the person being photographed. It tells the spectator more of their own personal views and experiences allowing them into more of who the photographer actually is themselves. I like the idea of documentary photography as it brings more of a real experience to the spectator, as humans I think that we are naturally curious especially to see what everyone else is doing. I think that I would want to photograph my sister and the life of being a new mum and working at the same time. I want to show the more difficult side of bringing up a small child rather than the glamorized perfect lifestyle people are let to believe mothers and fathers have shown of TV and films.
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