Secret = something that is kept unknown or unseen by others/ something that is not properly understood (a mystery).
Code = a system of words, letters, figures or symbols used to represent others, especially for the purpose of secrecy.
Conventions = a way in which something is usually done.
The group photo has powerful underlying conventions, whether a family portrait or of a gathering of friends. These reflect codes of behavior that shift over time. In the early 1990s Paul M Smith explored the convention of the ‘team photo’ and the ‘night out’ – photographs so often taken by groups of ‘lads’, which he took to be anything but spontaneous.
Trish Morrissey gently subverted the ritual of the family holiday photo in her 2005-7 series of photographs called Front, often swapping clothes and taking on the role of the mother in semi- formal gatherings staged on beaches in Britain and Australia.
