Family Photography Now

Book excerpt: An intimate, honest look at how we photograph our families through the lenses of some of the world’s great photographers People photograph their families more than ever before, whether casually, on a phone, or in a formal wedding portrait. This bold anthology explores how photographers around the world take on the emotional roller coaster and complex dynamics of family life. The book is divided into two parts: Our Own Families and Other People’s Families, focusing on photographers who make their own families their subjects and those who aim their lenses at other people’s. Each section includes an essay analyzing the complex attachments between brothers and sisters, parents and children, step-families and in-laws, outcasts and adoptees. The book includes the work of nearly forty international photographers, including sophisticated artworks in a range of photographic styles, and personal, never-before published shots. Birte Kaufman’s award-winning images of Irish travelers, Magnum member Trent Parke’s darkly amusing shots of his family in suburban Australia, Nadia Sablin’s elegy to her elderly aunts living in rural Russia, and Elina Brotherus’s devastatingrecords of failed IVF, are just a few of the astonishing visual journeys, supplemented by interviews with the artists, that push the boundaries of our understanding of family.