Family photos are some of our most precious possessions. Whether they are made to be seen or kept private, the material is as important to those captured as those it affects. Reviewing the cells of this social body, four particular photographers from the 1990s who questioned the format’s rites, rules, and mechanisms come to mind. From Michael Clegg and Yair Martin Guttmann, who distantly and meticulously photographed power families; to Richard Billingham’s spontaneous and dirty realism; the tenebrous Southern Gothic style of Sally Mann; or the sumptuously classic imagery by Carrie Mae Weems; their bodies of work disclose the dynamics and complexities of family portraiture.
Beginning at the height of the U.S. stock market boom of the 1980s, Wall Street bankers had portraits taken for their annual reports in the tradition of 18th century Dutch paintings, in which the rising industrial bourgeoisie demanded to be immortalized. Influenced by this historical lineage during the decade obsessed with the image and a at the New Museum in New York City, curated by William Olander, their portraits highlight the family photograph as a weapon of a social game. Enthroned on the catalogue’s cover, a work titled “An American Family: A Rejected Commission” looks as arrogant as it is sinister.
