Instructional Resources
Three Contemporary Artists Explore Family Photographs Recommended for Grades 7-9
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n 1888, when George Eastman introduced the “Kodak” camera, with the slogan, “you push the button, we do the rest,” he ushered in a new era in documenting family history. Photography left the professional studio and entered the home, where the camera became the primary instrument of self-knowledge and self-representation. The camera allowed the family story to be told, and family memories to be perpetuated (Hirsch, 1999). In these images, fleeting moments of childhood are captured and preserved, and the family unit is fixed for posterity. This accessibility has yielded untold billions of photographs as parents document birthdays, holidays, vacations, and other family milestones (Higonnet, 1998). When we photograph ourselves in a familial setting, we do not do so in a vacuum; rather, we respond to dominant mythologies of family life; to conceptions we have inherited; and to images we see on television, in advertising, and in film. Furthermore, concepts and images of family life also change through time. In 1960, 45% of U.S. homes had married parents with children under the age of 18. Population experts call this a traditional family. By 2000, fewer than 25% adhered to the traditional family model. Although the media primarily projects a static image of family, these statistics suggest that there is actually a kaleidoscope of diversity among American families that includes gay and lesbian couples and blended and single parent families.
B y K i m K a n ata n i a n d S h a r o n V at sk y
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Photography has become a primary means through which we not only record our past and remember our childhood, but also construct our concepts of family and ourselves. This Instructional Resource invites students to investigate notions of family and how we come to understand them through photography. Family pictures have also become objects of contemplation for contemporary artists and are used as instruments of social questioning. The artists included in this Instructional Resource go beyond the conventional approaches to expose the complicated stories of familial relations. They have interrogated not only the family itself, but also its established traditions of representation in both popular culture and art history.1
Objectives What can students learn from family pictures, which appear as snapshots or formal portraits? What stories do they tell about our own families or those of others? The theme of “family pictures” in this Instructional Resource encompasses the relationship between parents and children, the definition of gender and gender roles, the formation of self, and the often-traumatic memories of childhood. Focusing on the work of contemporary photographers Catherine Opie, Janine Antoni, and Tracey Moffat, students will have an opportunity to consider family and its traditions of representation. By engaging in the activities outlined in this resource, students will be able to: • discuss the nature of photographs and their conventions and how they are used to construct notions of family; • understand the work of three contemporary photographers who use family pictures as a way to examine and question social issues surrounding familial relations; and • create their own photographs to explore home, community, and portraiture.
About Catherine Opie and her Work Catherine Opie uses her camera to examine the world around her—documenting community, interpreting identity, and making sense of American culture. She has developed a contemporary approach to the practice of documentary photography and credits earlier photographers—including Eugene Atget, August Sander, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, and Dorothea Lange—among her greatest historical influences. In her previous work, Opie created images of gay and lesbian friends and has sought to provide visibility and representation to those who have been unrepresented or misrepresented in American culture. Oliver in a Tutu is part of Opie’s most personal series, In and Around Home. The series invites viewers into the artist’s dayto-day surroundings and allows them to engage with various components that make up her everyday life, including the interior of her home, the community that she lives in, and also the jarring and unexpected moments of receiving news via a television screen or other media that disrupts the calm of the household. The photograph Oliver in a Tutu captures the artist’s son as he momentarily poses for the camera. In the background, we also see her home, studio, and friends. Opie turns the camera on herself and her partner, their family life, and the diverse community in which they live—images that are frequently missing from the American “picture” of home life.2
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Exploring Photographs In Camera Lucida, a book on how photographs convey meaning and emotion, Roland Barthes (1981) notes that whenever a subject steps in front of the camera, four facets of that person are present: (1) who that individual thinks he is, (2) who he wants others to think he is, (3) who the photographer thinks the subject is, and (4) whom the photographer will try to make visible in his art. These ideas trouble the understanding that photographs are truthful, objective, accurate, and completely candid—and instead reinforce their interpretive nature. Photographers construct pictures and their subjects pose for them. • Ask students to each bring a family photograph to class. Look at them together and answer these questions: • Why do families take photographs? What purposes do they serve? • When do families take photographs? What types of moments are documented? Which are not? • What do these photographs say about family? • Who takes the family photographs? Does the person who captured the image construct a way of perceiving those who are pictured? • How accurately do family photographs reflect reality? Following the class discussion consider how the following three artists have explored this subject.
Discussion Questions • Describe this image. What are some of the details you notice? • Oliver, Catherine Opie’s son, is being raised by her and her partner, the painter Julie Burleigh. From the title of this photograph, Opie informs us that Oliver, her 2-year-old son, has donned a hot pink tutu, T-shirt, and a paper crown. What does this photograph tell you about Opie’s son? What does it say about her relationship to her son? What does it say about gender? • Would you like to be invited to Opie’s house? Why or why not? • Although at first glance this photograph may have the feeling of a candid snapshot, Opie actually combines elements that are carefully pre-planned with those that are more spontaneous. Which elements of this photograph appear to be staged? Which parts appear more impromptu?
Activity Have each student create a series of ten photographs in relationship to the concept “in and around home.” Compare how students depict their homes and neighborhoods. What are the similarities? What are the differences? What are the surprises? How are different notions of family constructed and for what reasons?
Instructional Resources
Catherine Opie, Oliver in a Tutu (from the series In and Around Home), 2004. C-print, Edition 5/5, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, 2006. 2006.34. © Catherine Opie.
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When we photograph ourselves in a familial setting, we do not do so in a vacuum; rather, we respond to dominant mythologies of family life; to conceptions we have inherited; and to images we see on television, in advertising, and in film.
About Janine Antoni and her Work Janine Antoni has created sculptures, videos, photographs, and paintings that investigate the intimate rituals of everyday life, such as eating, bathing, sleeping, and washing. Her art operates in the space between object and performance, as in works sculpted with her teeth or tongue, a painting executed on the floor using her hair as a “brush,” or drawings made with her fluttering eyelashes. In Mom and Dad (1994), Antoni used her parents as sculptural material for this photographic triptych. Working with prosthetic make up, wigs, and clothing, she refashioned her father to look like her mother and vice versa. She photographed them in poses associated with traditional portraiture. Their inverted images confound gender distinctions and question the neatly divided dichotomies of paternal/maternal and masculine/ feminine. By altering the physical presentations of her parents, she also questions her own identity. In the end, the artist decided that this triptych was really another self-portrait, acknowledging that she is a biological composite of both parents.
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Discussion Questions • Take a careful look at this triptych by Janine Antoni. What do you notice? What seems to be happening as you look at this sequence of three images? What is puzzling? • Each of the photographs captures the same two people— the artist’s mother and father. What messages is she communicating by portraying her parents in this way? What do these portraits say about family? What do they say about the artist and her relationship to her parents? • Antoni is exploring the idea of herself as a product of these two people. Although these images portray her parents, Antoni considers this work a self-portrait. Why? In what ways are these photographs similar to or different from formal portraits that are familiar to you?
Instructional Resources
Janine Antoni, Mom and Dad, 1994. Three silver dye bleach prints (Ilfochrome) 24 x 19 ⁷⁄8 inches (61 x 50.5 cm) each. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by the International Director’s Council, 1996. 96.451. © Janine Antoni.
Activity • Explore Antoni’s concept of melding the features of two individuals into one by using collage. First, take a digital photograph of each student, enlarge it, and print it onto an 8½ x 11-inch piece of paper. • Next, have students choose a person who has greatly helped to shape their identity. This can be a family member, someone else they know and admire, or a role model who has influenced them, including those from history or the media. Have students take a digital photograph or find an image of this person and have them enlarge and print this image onto an 8½ x 11-inch piece of paper as well. Have each student research the individual’s life. • Lastly, make several copies of both of the faces that students will be using for the collage. Ask students to combine the features from both faces to create a new hybrid personage.3 Once the new hybrid portrait is completed, students can write a short biography that combines the student’s traits with those of the person they have researched.
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About Tracey Moffatt and her Work Born in Brisbane, Australia, Tracey Moffatt was initially trained as a filmmaker. Although her work may appear to capture a fleeting moment, in actuality, her works are carefully constructed narratives. Scarred for Life (1994), one of Moffatt’s best-known series, comprises nine images featuring children or adolescents in suburban settings.4 Each image records a different trauma inflicted upon children by parents or by older siblings, from verbal to physical abuse. The individuals pictured are actors, selected and arranged by Moffatt, in a documentary format. These staged tableaux, printed as photolithographs in muted colors on cream paper, are accompanied by short captions and simulate pages from Life magazine, a popular periodical from the 1960s. The captions are based on true stories. This deadpan journalistic presentation is at odds with the often intimate and painful subject matter. At the same time, the images have an informal, snapshot appearance and are dated from 1956 to 1977 as if they were pages from a family photo album. Her staged documentary-style photographs appear to capture traumatic family encounters and seem to imply that injuries from our childhood years remain with us throughout our adult lives.
Discussion Questions • Look carefully at this photography. Create a list of all the things that you notice. • What are some of the characteristics that this photograph suggests about its subject? Write a brief character profile that includes this person’s approximate age, aspirations, and living situation. What about the photograph leads you to these conclusions? • The caption under this photograph reads: “Her father’s nickname for her was ‘useless’.” Describe how the caption and image work together to create meaning. How does it speak to familial relationships? • Moffatt’s captions are derived from true stories. Experiment with composing alternative captions for this work. How can changing the caption influence the impact of the work? • If you were to have a conversation with this person, what might be the dialogue? • In this series, Moffatt focuses on detrimental and damaging incidents between family members. Do you agree or disagree that incidents from childhood can continue to influence us even as adults? Why or why not?
Activity
In 1960, 45% of U.S. homes had married parents with children under the age of 18. Population experts call this a traditional family. By 2000, fewer than 25% adhered to the traditional family model.
Ask students to work with a partner to create a photograph that creates a narrative portrait about family life. Before taking the photograph, decide on: • Your clothing • Pose • Facial expression • Props • Background • Lighting • Cropping How do these choices help to suggest a story about family relationships? What caption would you choose for your work? How does the caption and image combine to enable a narrative on family life?
Right: Tracey Moffatt, Useless, 1974 (from the series Scarred for Life), 1994. Offset lithograph on paper, A.P., edition of 50, 31½ x 23½ inches (80 x 59.7 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by the Photography Committee and the International Director’s Council and Executive Committee Members: Ruth Baum, Edythe Broad, Elaine Terner Cooper, Dimitris Daskalopoulos, Harry David, Gail May Engelberg, Shirley Fiterman, Nicki Harris, Dakis Joannou, Rachel Lehmann, Linda Macklowe, Peter Norton, Tonino Perna, Elizabeth Richebourg Rea, Mortimer D.A. Sackler, Simonetta Seragnoli, David Teiger, Ginny Williams, and Elliot K. Wolk, and Sustaining Members: Tiqui Atencio, Linda Fischbach, Beatrice Habermann, Miryam Knutson, and Cargill and Donna MacMillan, 2004.76.6. © Tracey Moffatt.
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Assessment
Conclusion
The teacher should observe student participation in discussions focusing on the works presented in this Instructional Resource and their engagement in creating their own work. • Students should contribute to the discussion of each of the works of art and consider how each artist represents or challenges established traditions of family pictures. • Following the completion of student-generated photographs, students should talk about their processes and individual motivations for their work, and how the work of the artists presented has informed their own ideas and approaches to artmaking. They may also note what they find satisfactory about their completed project and what changes they would consider for the future. Students should also contribute responses and questions focusing on work by other students. • Students should complete a short essay focusing on how their understanding of family photographs has been extended or has changed as a result of their activities.
The investigation of family pictures as a source of personal history and as an area that contemporary artists are investigating expands students’ ability to critically engage with family as a real and constructed concept. These works provide an introduction to how important the exploration of self, as constructed through family, is to contemporary artists. This exploration may be of particular interest for adolescent students who are poised on the brink of adulthood and in the process of forming and redefining their own sense of identity in relation to their place in the family and in society. Kim Kanatani is the Gail Engelberg Director of Education at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and can be reached at
[email protected] Sharon Vatsky is Associate Director of Education at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and can be reached at svatsky@ guggenheim.org
Internet Resources The images included in this resource can be found on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s website at: www.guggenheim.org/artscurriculum www.guggenheimcollection.org http://pastexhibitions.guggenheim.org/familypictures/index.html
Resources on social justice can be found at: www.tolerance.org Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance. Teaching Tolerance is dedicated to reducing prejudice, improving intergroup relations, and supporting equitable school experiences for our nation’s children. www.tolerance.org/teach/activities/activity.jsp?p=0&ar=821&pa=6 ABCs of Sexual Orientation: Suggested resource materials for teachers and students.
References Akeret, R. U. (1973). Photoanalysis: How to interpret the hidden psychological meaning of personal and public photographs. New York: Peter H. Wyden, Inc. Barthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography. New York: Hill and Wang. Blessing, J. (2005). Family pictures. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Dennison, L., Spector, N., & Young, J. (2003). Moving pictures: Contemporary photography and video from the Guggenheim museum collection. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications. Higonnet, A. (1998). Pictures of innocence: The history and crisis of ideal childhood. London: Thames & Hudson. Hirsch, M. (1999). The familial gaze. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.
Note All images copyrighted by the artists are reprinted here courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.
Endnotes 1 The works in this instructional resource were selected from Family Pictures, an exhibition organized by Jennifer Blessing, Curator of Photography on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, February 9–April 16, 2007. 2 According to recent census figures, approximately one million children are currently being raised by same-sex couples. The resources section suggests several websites that provide guidance for adults on how to speak with children about same-sex relationships and other gender-related topics. 3 This lesson can also be implemented as a digital activity using Adobe Photoshop. 4 Other works from this series by Tracey Moffatt can be viewed at www.guggenheimcollection.org
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