© Joanna Piotrowska
When the American photographer Larry Sultan
published his photobook Pictures From Home in 1992, he spoke of wanting to deconstruct the idealised image of the institution of family life as it was being pedalled in Reagan-era USA. “I wanted to puncture this mythology of the family,” he wrote.
Sultan was willing to use his own family to prove his point. With muddled affection, he had spent the last ten years photographing the dynamics of his relationship with his parents. The resulting body of work was, in some ways, an alternative family album. “What drives me to continue this work is difficult to name,” he said, “but it has more to do with love than with sociology. With being a subject in the drama rather than a witness.”
Recently, a small constellation of photography projects have emerged that re-examine the idea of the family. Some of these artists and photographers shoot their own families, making their personal history the subject of the drama. Others turn their lens on the dynamics of other families, looking in from the outside upon close-knit, often difficult relationships.