Video: Invented Relatives: Family Portraits with Strangers
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
New York-based photographer Jamie Diamond takes family portraits. It would seem that nothing unusual: the family gathers for a special celebration and prudently invites a photographer to capture the joyful event. This is exactly what happens in the staged portraits of Diamond: friendly people of different ages, members of one large family, pose for another memorable photo. If not for one thing: Diamond photographs complete strangers to each other.
If the viewer is not aware of what is happening, he is unlikely to suspect a trick and will probably begin to subconsciously compose family stories and look for similarities in people who are not actually distant relatives to each other. For the project "Constructed Family Portraits" (which can be roughly translated as "Invented family portraits") to be realized, Diamond, literally, on the street, or through special databases, was looking for people ready to take part in the experiment as a fictional family. The role of the living room was played by a previously rented room in the hotel.
According to the photographer, in the proposed circumstances, people should behave as a single organism, a kind of collective whole. They must demonstrate an identity that fits in with the fictional situation. About how strangers manage to portray family ties so naturally, the photographer says: “They intuitively follow the rules of the genre. The role they play in the group is as if attributing to them a new personality. Behind the outward carelessness and unencumbered smiles, it is difficult to see what the project participants involved in this strange photo experiment really feel.
However, Diamond goes further. It is important for her not only to "construct" a family using a special codified language of images. The staged “correct” postures and the stipulated distance between the “members” of the family clearly demonstrate the alienation, which, as often happens, is also noticeable between the closest relatives in real families. Thus, the photographer questions the structure and stability of the family as a unit of society, and in the very nature of the portrait genre she is worried about the performative aspect - the family does not exist by itself: it seems to pass through the filter of public consciousness, demonstrating how it should be …
Another photographer, Lauren Wells, does not in any way question the truth of family values. And as proof, he cites a tender photo session of Nina and Gramp, a married couple who have been married for 61 years.
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