Family Portrait, a way to socialize or a form of documentation?

Laura Jayne Smith
Dialogues in Design Lvl 5
Family Portrait, A way to socialise or a form of documentation?
In the Book “Family Snaps: The Meaning of domestic photography”, Patricia Holland states that “Our Memory
is never fully ours, nor are the pictures ever unmediated representations of our past”(Patricia Holland, Pg 14 )
when reading this quote I started to disagree with Patricia’s thought because I always feel that photographs
are the most reliable way to remember something in our past. I then began to read more into the book and
started to understand her views on photography and how social photography can be over exaggerated and
how people put specific things in the common family album, ignoring the bad moments of life.
Social photographs are photos that are taken to socialise an event/memory that has happened in someone’s
life. They are one of the most popular ways to socialize to people; they are taken to capture a memory which
people can look back on in the future. However Patricia feels that we may ask “For whom is this image so
carefully so spontaneously manufactured?”*Patricia Holland, pg7+. I feel that the social photograph is specially
manufactured for the photographer themselves; they were there at the time and tried to create the perfect
photograph so they can Re-experience what they did in the past. Even though the pictures look beautiful
themselves it will also display the bad memories cased in the photographers mind, everything they witnessed
and encountered at the time will come back to them when they see the photograph, the reason why we only
see a beautiful image and nothing else is because it’s a secret/treasure for only the person who captured the
photo.

I thought to go on a photograph journey and explore other people’s photos to see if there is a story behind any
of them, after searching through many books and websites, I finally found this photo.
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Laura Jayne Smith
Dialogues in Design Lvl 5
Fig 1

This photograph was taken by Thomas Hawks in Portland and was uploaded on a social photography network
website called “Flickr” in 2008 with the title “Angels are Messengers from God”. What the viewers see is just a
normal happy portrait image with fantastic lighting and perfect composition however to the photographer’s
eyes this photo brings up an interesting story and a memory to only himself. This photo was selected by the
Twip (“This week in photography”) podcast as the winner for a photo challenge they did on portrait
photography. Thomas noticed how popular this photograph became so he decided to share his story towards
the image and express what feelings he gets amongst it.
In April 10th, 2008 Thomas wrote a blog with the title “A story behind a photograph”, and the photo was placed
inside the blog. Thomas then started off the story by saying “Every so often you take a photograph that has
personal impact on your life. This photo is one of those for me.”*Thomas Hawks, 2008+ this began to make me
wonder what is so special about this photo.
It turns out that this photo was taken at the Burnside Bridge in Portland where apparently a lot of homeless
people congregate in homeless shelters underneath the bridge. Thomas was taking pictures whilst wearing
headphones and listening to music, suddenly unexpectedly a guy tries to get Thomas’s attention by saying
something to him, however Thomas ignores him and kept his headphones on and replied “I don’t have any
money”. Thomas then felt ashamed for saying that and took his headphones off to hear what the guy said. The
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Laura Jayne Smith
Dialogues in Design Lvl 5
stranger then says “I didn’t want your money all I asked for was a photograph of me.” Due to such
embarrassment he attempts to change the lens for the perfect shot for him and he wanted to make the photo
special. He then thanked the stranger and he thanked him back.
I feel that this is a pretty strong story and now looking back at the photo I can see it means more than just a
normal shot to Tom. When Thomas sees the photograph it reminds him of his rudeness and embarrassment of
how he randomly insulted the man, by thinking he’s asking him for money and ignoring him. However Thomas
also feels that there are some good memories towards this photograph by saying how the stranger’s
appearance on that day changed his life, He began to imagine the stranger was an angel sent to him. The
stranger made him realize how he needs to see people more as human rather than a distraction intervening
his photographs. Thomas wishes he could see the man again just to give him the photograph and apologise to
how he mistreated him.
If a simple photo like this has a massive impact on the photographer, I’d expect a lot more photos have a story
like this to themselves but of course like I said before it’s the photographers secret.
Fig 2

Although I strongly feel that the social photograph have a vast representation of
memories I also feel that it’s becoming very rare. Social photographs are becoming a
way to document life and making an image just look beautiful, they are slowly
merging with the documentary photograph and you can tell this by looking at recent
family photographs and wedding photos.
A documentary photograph is usually seen in advertisements, newspapers or
journalism books, sometimes there is no social activity captured however they are
used to document something for the viewer, and usually they are very much staged or focused on the history
of life. Even though, some have a small story beyond the photos I also feel that you can never tell which ones
are staged or which ones are a really documented. For instance let’s look at this photo to your left which is by
Edward S Curtis, Edward was a documentary photographer that focused on the image of the North American
Indian. There was a reason to why Edward had a Fascination on the Indian tribes and I found out why in a book
by Mark Gidley “Edward S Curtis and the North American Indian, Incorporated”, Mark mentions that “In 1911,
after a performance of his elaborate musicale at the Brooklyn institute, Curtis reported to a friend that
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Laura Jayne Smith
Dialogues in Design Lvl 5
Franklin Hooper an eminent scientist of the time, had told him that he was the first to give them..the real
Indian. What that audience actually experienced was obviously not the real Indian, or even what Curtis himself
had witness in the field, but a representation.”[Mark Gidley, Pg 4] Due to Curtis realizing that people did not
actually understand what the real Indian looks like he decided to make a photo journalistic book project called
“The North American Indian” which he ended up travelling around the world to capture many Indian tribes, so
he could show people the image of a true Indian. Curtis ended up taking a total of 2228 photographs and most
of them had the same theme like the photo in this essay, the portrait is strong it shows the Indians facial
features very well it’s obvious that Edward try to achieve this, he wanted to make the photos powerful so we
are drawn to them. This character has a strong facial expression, this shows that the image is not just any
portrait, he means serious business. The whole point of this photograph is to display what an Indian should be
seen as, and he purposely manufactured this for an image to document something.
This is where I go back to Patricia Holland’s statement on how she feels that “The family group remains a
centre of fantasy”[Patricia Holland, pg 5] and I begin to agree with her, because even though I feel that there
are memories amongst photographs I also feel that the common family albums are merely just a way to
document what a family apparently should look like! Cameras have started to become a powerful tool to make
something just look pretty and people just pose for the camera; families are portrayed as the sort of perfect
family. It’s usually professionals taking the photographs whom have no clue about the family or their
personality amongst themselves however they just go for the normal family image where the kids sit down and
the parents are positioned between the kids. Also when people perform a wedding you will usually see a
Fig 3
photographer that was hired and has no clue about the couple. The

Fig 4
professional then makes them stand still

in an organised manner with usually the
couple in the middle and the bridesmaids
in the front. Where did this start? Why
do people attempt to display the perfect photo in a family album? I myself
blame advertising. When advertising first started, there was always an image of
“the nuclear family” enjoying some strange consumer good. This then became a
campaign for camera companies such as Kodak they began to advertise the cameras as a perfect way to
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Laura Jayne Smith
Dialogues in Design Lvl 5
capture a memory and then display a staged image of family, these then slowly integrated into albums
creating this idealised family image. People saw these adverts and began to feel that their portraits should
look like this; it was a sort of brain wash that has become unnoticed. You would see slogans such as “Keep a
Kodak story of the children” or “Kodak pictures of the Christmas house party all help keep going the Christmas
memories”, the perfect photograph for the perfect family.
Sometimes now I begin to wonder what a social and documentary photograph is, even though I explained both
types of themes on this essay people always say a family picture goes along the theme of social imagery, but
then I ask how are they used to socialise to people? The photographer can’t tell the story because he’s just a
professional that was hired and the family can’t because there’s not much of a story to it but that it’s just the
family. I also mentioned that documentary usually focuses on the history of life however usually a family
album is not looked upon in the present and is left stored till someone in the future can retrace them. Are we
just merely leaving a piece of history for future families? Even so only the current family can get memories
from the photographs because they experience whom the person is behind a portrait however do you see
yourself skimming through an album that you made yourself? From what I know people past it onto others or
it’s just skimmed through by some curious visitor. Whenever I look at photos of my past ancestors they are just
unrecognizable figures, I will never really know who they were or how they acted because I never experienced
their presence. This is why I feel that albums are not really for social purposes anymore but just a journal of
our life that will end up getting past on through many generations however never experience any true
memory, all it is doing is documenting a family.






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