Shoot the Family
It has become more and more a common practice for artists to discuss domesticity, ideas of family, and notions of the every day in their work. This semi-private world contains, for each of us, a unique set of scenarios – a varying range of emotional closeness, connection, disconnection, and fantasy, which most of us acknowledge but don’t wholly discuss. In a current exhibition on display at the Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery at Massachusetts College of Art, a selection of artists explore these themes through photography and video, sharing experiences that are often deeply intimate. The personal work of these artists begins to speak about broader historical, social, and economic conditions that frame family life. Ranging from practices inspired by documentary photography or film, staged photography, performance, and conceptual art, Shoot the Family offers a multi-layered representation of the family, asking the viewer to reflect upon their own familial relationships and examine more closely the domestic realm.
Mitch Epstein, in Family Business (1999-2003), documents the collapse of his father’s failing real estate and furniture businesses. Through dismal scenes of the workplace, the warehouse, the local neighborhood, and stark portraits of the workers as well as his own family members, Epstein shapes a story of loss that is crushingly telling. At the exhibition we are only presented with two photographs from the body of work. The two pictures, however, are a part of a wonderful dialogue.
Dad’s Breifcase, 2000
© Mitch Epstein
Dad, Hampton Ponds III, 2002
© Mitch Epstein
In one of the images, Epstein’s father’s abandoned briefcase lay chalked with dust, left coldly on a bare floral mattress. The other, a large portrait of his father wading in water, is a striking depiction of inward struggle (one can feel the desperation in his father’s glance). Included between the photographs is a television set playing a short video loop of his father tagging merchandise at the store and a rather concise voiceover analysis of his father’s handwriting by Epstein himself. As one of the strong points in the show, the work effectively illustrates how an individual’s occupational hardship can affect family members and how moments of suffering have the potential to bring family members closer together.
In Ray’s a Laugh (1996), Richard Billingham’s often humorous but painful study of his alcoholic father and neglected home, the artist takes on the role of the observer but not as the intrusive ‘outsider’ – rather, the photographs share a very tender view, testifying his empathy for his subjects, for his family. Yet in the exhibition, Billingham does not show the photographs, but instead a video projection that only further illustrates a domestic relationship.
Ray in Bed, 2000 (video still)
© Richard BillinghamRay in Bed (2000) documents a moment of disconnection that Billingham experiences with, again, his own father figure. As Billingham films his father waking up in the morning, his presence is established to the viewer, although – in a fog – his father fails to acknowledge him. This conflict, which can be translated as disconnect, a division between family members, is an important aspect of family life that Billingham represents in a moving way.
The contemporary family is exemplified in many other pieces throughout the show. One piece in particular, from a set of photographs titled The Galesberg Series (1984-) by Chris Verene, touches on a sensitive and profound moment.
“My cousin Steve with one of his daughters. His wife had just left them.”
© Chris Verene
As Rachel Kushner so eloquently describes in Art Forum, the image has a special intensity:
The moment that Verene captures is a bitter and sorrowful scene. If one opens Verene’s book to the page that this image appears on and proceeds to turn the page, it simply reads, “After the divorce, Steve did not get to see the girls anymore.” All of the work in the exhibition sheds light on the formation of each individual’s physical, cultural, or sexual identity within the family structure that has formed around each artist, or in some cases, the values and traits they have passed along to their own families. The family is then linked to such issues as one’s discussed: financial hardship, disconnection, and loss, as well as other themes that have gone unspoken, such as the power of gender, the maternal comfort, ethnic stereotypes, and changing generational roles. The photographs and video in Shoot the Family transform the familiar object, the family photograph, into a revealing look at family, the domestic space, and contemporary culture. – Shoot the Family is organized and circulated by iCI, New York, and curated by Ralph Rugoff, director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. Shoot the Family Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery Massachusetts College of Art January 15 – March 10, 2007The Galesburg photos betray a taste for lurid colors and oddball characters reminiscent of William Eggleston. But unlike Eggleston, Verene doesn’t attempt to shoot “democratically,” to photograph everything around him with equal interest and attention. On the contrary, he has spent years waiting to capture moments that crystallize entire constellations of meaning and emotion. In one picture, taken in 1992, a man sits with a little girl in a McDonald’s. The caption reads: “My cousin Steve with one of his daughters. His wife had just left them.” Steve looks off to the side distractedly, while the girl gazes blankly into the lens. The drab backdrop, rather than trivializing the moment, serves to intensity the discord between the implicit pathos of the scene and its utter banality. The photo’s power lies in the tension between the discomfiting intimacy of looking in on a family breakup and the almost comical impersonality of the fast-food setting. One can’t help but note that the girl’s eyes are the same shade of blue as the vinyl banquette on which she sits.