What should a family photo look like?

A full day. Saw the neurologist about the migraines; she ordered an MRI. Went to the gym. In the evening, met Sue at Blue Sky Gallery for a photography talk, after which we watched the Strawberry Moon rise over the city in pink glory, a day late but still solstice-ish.  

The gallery talk covered a subject dear to my heart: family photographs, in conjunction with a show of family photographs by Blake Andrews. Like Sally Mann, Andrews takes intimate photos of his immediate family, including photos of his children, sometimes nude. He makes photos with a film camera and exhibits the photos in galleries and sells them, but he does not release nude pictures of his children for use in publicity nor on the internet. This may explain why he has not faced the storm of criticism that has dogged Sally Mann and her work; or it may be that the fickle morality of the American public spent its ire on Mann and has lost interest in the issue now. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. Diana Blok’s nude family photographs have not, to my knowledge, faced the kind of moral outrage that greeted Sally Mann’s. But Diana Blok is Dutch, and Europeans are known for being more comfortable with nudity than Americans.

Molly Newgard’s lecture began with daguerrotypes and moved through Julia Cameron, Steiglitz, Weston and others, ending with Carrie Mae Weems, Nan Goldin (seen here, reflected on the surface of the framed work of Blake Andrews) and Sally Mann. After talking about various motivations for taking family photographs, Newgard left us pondering the question, “What should a family photograph look like?” Of course there is no single answer to that, but I think it’s useful to ask ourselves what we want our family photographs to look like, how we feel about privacy and the public realm, and why we post family photos, if we do; or why not, if we don't. I’d love to hear other photographers’ thoughts on that.