vel,’’ the great monuments and vistas of the world,
previously photographed by professionals with
great respect and artistry, now shared the frame
with grinning spouses and line-ups of reluctantly
posed children. Worse still, citizens feared being
photographed against their will and did so to the
extent that some pressed for, and occasionally ob-
tained, legislation prohibiting the practice.
As the popularity of point-and-shoot photogra-
phy continued to grow, the ‘‘camera fiend’’ became
the more innocuous ‘‘shutterbug’’ and, finally, an
entirely assimilated participant in public behavior.
Conversely, the importance of public places and
events were to some extent signified by the numbers
of people taking pictures. Cameras and film were
sold at historical sites and monuments, recreational
areas, sports arenas, theme parks, zoos, and mu-
seums. From at least the 1963 Zapruder home
movie of the Kennedy assassination, images, parti-
cularly videos taken by non-professionals, were in-
tegrated into professional photojournalism.
Throughout the century, families were inundated
with these self-generated images. Photographs not
consigned to shoeboxes, envelopes, or desk drawers
were placed in redesigned family albums—albums
differing significantly from their nineteenth-cen-
tury predecessors. Earlier albums contained ornate
pages with slots into whichcartes-de-visiteand ca-
binet cards were placed. These portraits of family
members shared the album with images of illustri-
ous persons or places with which the family wished
to be associated. The overall effect was that of a
record, often compared to the record keeping pages
of the family bible.
Twentieth-century family albums were character-
istically composed of blank pages onto which var-
ious sized photographs could be attached in an
infinite variety of layouts and collages. With this
physical change came a change in the tone and
purpose of the albums. The illustrious persons and
places were phased out as was the nineteenth-cen-
tury practice of post-mortem photography. Family
albums became less a pictorial record of family
members than visual narratives of personal tri-
umph: births, children’s parties, first days at school,
graduations, weddings, anniversaries, other cere-
monies and special events. The family displayed its
possessions (homes, cars, pets) and, in its travel
photos, its possession of the world’s most desirable
locales. Unlike nineteenth-century portraiture, al-
most everyone looking at the camera—that is, look-
ing at another member of the family or a friend
photographing them—smiled.
Most family photographic albums were arranged
in a roughly chronological order that continued in
volume after volume. However, as Langford de-
monstrates, albums could be arranged thematically
or could focus on single events or experiences, some
of which were not entirely pleasant. The family
photographs could be augmented by postcard and
studio photographs of family members. Entire
albums of professional photographs—most notably
the wedding album—were professionally photo-
graphed and arranged in a highly ritualized man-
ner. It was also possible for the creation of the
album itself to be a ritual, classmates giving each
other photographs for graduation albums or, in
the 1990s, Japanese school girls assembling ‘‘pass-
ports to heaven,’’ albums filled with photographs
of their good deeds. Albums might even be reduced
to a set of wallet-sized images bound together in
plastic sleeves.
The visual narrative of the family album was
usually accompanied by a verbal narrative, either
through elaborate captions or the verbal accompa-
niment of a family member. Verbal narration also
accompanied the presentation of family images as
transparencies which, thanks to the electric slide
projector, were second only to albums as a means
of storing and presenting family images. Verbal
narration was also a part of home movies. Kodak’s
16 mm home movie system, introduced in 1923, its 8
mm system put on the market in 1932 (re-intro-
duced as the Brownie movie camera in 1946), and
its super-8 mm film and equipment, introduced in
1965, produced silent movies over which the film-
maker or others were expected to speak.iiiWhen
these formats gave way to the video recorder,
images of family activities became ‘‘self-narrating,’’
long takes of synchronized sound activities very
much in the manner of the ‘‘cinema verite’’ films
released by documentary filmmakers. The more
edited narration of family video, including music
and voice over, came with the appearance of pro-
fessionally produced wedding tapes and, at the end
of the century, with home computer-based digital
video editing.
These narrative practices of family photography
(sometimes referred to as ‘‘vernacular’’ photogra-
phy) had, by the latter part of the century, gener-
ated some academic commentary. The most
frequently quoted work, Roland Barthes’Camera
Lucida, was a meditation on the manner by which a
photograph of his mother functioned as means of
focusing his memory. Barthes’ work is expanded
upon in a more feminist ideological context in
work such as Annette Kuhn’sFamily Secretsand
Marianne Hirsch’sFamily Frames. Martha Lang-
ford’sSuspended Conversationspursues the idea of
narrative in family albums while Linda HavertyFAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY