Dirty Linen, Nausea and Belgian Waffles - Marjolaine Ryley

(This text is an extended version of a talk given at the one day event 'Picturing the Family - From the Inside Out' held at The National Portrait Gallery, 2006)                              

Can a subject ever be too personal? I have often asked myself this question. Is it relevant to take photographs of my own family and why should anyone else be interested in my family? And to add to this if so many artists have already worked in this area is this not already well-trodden ground? My compulsion to photograph my own family as well as my fascination with the work of other artists working in this genre has led me to study this fascinating subject over a number of years and investigate this question in more depth.

I believe our families define us from an early age and go on to play an enormous part in our lives. Deciding when to 'start a family' can be one of the most difficult decisions we have to make. The family and the dynamics within it can be personal but also political.  

In our current society politicians and religious groups may use ideas about the family to control and to manipulate us implying that we should buy in to the idea of a 'normal' family, conservative, proper, defined. Within mainstream culture and the media family' plays an important role. In soap operas and numerous television dramas we see the use of 'the family' as the focus for enacting a series of family dramas, traumas, bereavements, affairs, births and marriages. There are many famous families both real and fictional that we feel we know intimately and can identify with, from the Walton's to the Fowlers, the Blair's and the Beckham's, the Ewing's and the Kennedy's. Many films utilise the family as a site for exploring the complex and multilayered relationships that arise within the family dynamic. We repeatedly see the theme of the family gathering that descends into chaos as some usually drunken revelation emerges. One of the most notable is the scene in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies where the revelation of one woman's adopted daughter emerges alongside the news of her sister in laws infertility. Suddenly the tables are turned, the couple with everything; financial security and a beautiful house are compared to the woman who is struggling and single, but has two daughters. Our sense of judgement shifts as we realise the true value of what these women have. One woman is clearly richer because she has a family. Another example is the shocking revelations of child abuse in the Dogme film Festen where the perfect family slowly reveals its dark hidden secrets. Whether in soap or on the big screen these scenes show what happens when our families 'dirty linen' gets an airing.

Historically the family as depicted in the Victorian studio portrait photographs that abound is presented as together, both emotionally and financially. It is poised, considered contained and inoffensive. As photography became more widely available and costs fell more and more families even with lower incomes could afford a camera. While traditionally men took the pictures and women made up the albums the 'family snap' shot continued to present the family 'veneer'. Our family snaps continue to play an important role in family life. Recording children at a time before their own memory is seen as critical. To capture your child's early years really is essential. Most of us would be horrified to here a friend has no photographs of themselves as child. We would consider this tantamount to a form of child abuse and wonder what dreadful circumstances had led to this.

In the novel Austerltz by W.G. Sebald (1) a single photograph leads Austerlitz to uncover the truth about his past and his real family prior to his fourth birthday. Photography offers him the first clue to a world locked away from his that nevertheless lingers like a melancholic disease within him. As photography gradually gives way to memory the truth about his identity is revealed. The drama of this work is a theme played out time and again in literature, theatre, art and cinema.

Artists using photography have a special claim upon this subject. Photography, their chosen medium is already a part of childhood experience and the family in the western world, so their choice of medium allows for a direct exploration of this subject, ready indexed to the family snap and all the misconceptions within it.

In her essay Ghost Worlds: Photography and the Family, Val Williams writes:

"The post war exhibition family of man (1951) seemed to suggest a new optimism about the "international family" - a suggestion quickly challenged by a new wave of American photographers including Diane Arbus, Garry Winograd, Bill Owens and Williams Eggleston whose work hinted at dysfunction and alienation. In their work family members were isolated from each other lost in a morass of misunderstanding and miscommunication." (2)

Many artists have worked in the fascinating arena of family photography, inspired by these earlier works. Larry Sultan, Nick Waplington, Richard Billingham and Tina Barney amongst others revealed the family in new ways. They explore the dark side of family life that seems prevalent in many families despite their class, religion or economic background. Diane Arbus believed there was   'something inherently creepy about all families.' (3)

As art photography has developed and the personal subject of family has been increasingly validated, 'vernacular' photography has also been recognised as making important and interesting contributions. The result has been an inevitable collision of the two. Vernacular collections have made their way into galleries and the web has provided a space for amateurs and professionals alike to share their photographs. Phaidon's recent Photoblog Book (4) is a testament to the rich wealth of photography on sites such as flickr. The private album has now gone public and as webloggs now offer the perfect opportunity for us to reveal our kith and kin 'warts and all' and as reality television makes celebrities of normal people it seems everyone and (their families) can now star in their own lives. A further testament to the obsession with family is the enormous popularity of genealogy on the Internet, third most popular pursuit after personal finance and pornography. People are looking to create families anew, on-line, in chat rooms as representations in family trees. The family as a subject continues to be relevant because we all have or had a family and we all feel acutely its presence or lack of its presence in or lives.

"Photographers interests shift continuously. A new emerging generation of photographers have begun to look sideways at the family working on ideas of memory and object. Photographers have perhaps in recent years taken a step back from family portraiture and are looking obliquely at the domestic, rather than the 'now' there is as sense of history, of things half-remembered, ambiguous, enigmatic. The anxiety and drama which so informed family photography in the 1980's and 1990's has been replaced by a highly directed melancholy, a collection of ghosts."(6)

 

(1) Sebald, W.G., Austerlitz

(2) Williams, V., Ghost Worlds: Photography and the Family, EXIT magazine

(3) Armstrong, C., on Arbus, D. Biology, Destiny, Photography: Difference. October, Vol. 66

(4) Williams, V., Ghost Worlds: Photography and the Family, EXIT magazine