Rugg’sPicturing Ourselvesis a study of the shaping
of our perception of four historical figures by the
informal photographs taken of them.
Family photography has also been of consider-
able interest to twentieth-century artistic photogra-
phers. The snapshot aesthetic—a rejection of
formal aesthetics in favor of the spontaneity and
naı ̈vete ́of amateur photography—has been cited as
a sensibility linking the work of fine art photogra-
phers from Walker Evans to Garry Winogrand.
Home movie formats were essential to the practice
of experimental filmmaking. From the 1970s, the
art photographer most visibly concerned with
family photography has been Jo Spence, particu-
larly in her exhibition,The Family Album, 1939–
1979 (1979) and her 1986 bookPutting Myself in
the Picture.The family photograph has also been
the basis for especially striking monumental sculp-
ture. Perhaps the most noted example of this was
Yaffa Eliach’sTower of Facesin the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum. A three story space
whose walls and ceiling are covered with more than
1600 studio portraits and enlarged snapshots, the
tower is a visual reincarnation of a single village’s
holocaust victims.
Eliach’sTowereffectively summarizes the place
of family photography in the twentieth century. It
mirrors the expectation of visual identity—every-
one, as it turned out, had their picture taken. And
that they did so, mattered. For, in Barbie Zelizer’s
phrase, ‘‘the mechanics of visual history and histor-
ical record’’ have, in effect, helped dictate the mo-
numental role of the quotidian.
RenateWickens-FeldmanSeealso:Brownie; Camera: An Overview; Camera:
Instant; Camera: Point and Shoot; Eastman Kodak
Company; Spence, Jo; Vernacular Photography
Further Reading
Barthes, Roland.Camera Lucida; Reflections on Photogra-
phy. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill
and Wang, 1981.
Eliach, Yaffa.There Once was a World. New York: Little,
Brown and Company, 1998.
Henisch, Heinz K. and Bridget D. Henisch.The Photo-
graphic Experience, 1839–1914, Images and Attitudes.
University Park: The Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1993.
Hirsch, Marianne.Family Frames; Photography, Narrative
and Postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1997.
Holland, Patricia. ‘‘‘Sweet it is to scan...’: personal photo-
graphs and popular photography’’ inPhotography: A
Critical Introduction. Edited by Liz Wells. London: Rou-
tledge, 1997.
Jay, Bill. ‘‘The Photographer as Aggressor’’ inObserva-
tions; Essays on Documentary Photography. Edited by
David Featherstone. Carmel, CA: The Friends of Photo-
graphy, 1984.
Kuhn, Annette.Family Secrets; Acts of Memory and Ima-
gination. London: Verso, 1995.
Langford, Martha.Suspended Conversations; The Afterlife
of Memory in Photographic Albums. Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 2001.
Lewis, Brian, and Colin Harding, eds.Kept in a Shoebox:
the Popular Experience of Photography. Castleford:
Yorkshire Art Circus, 1992.
Lister, Martin, ed.Family Snaps; The Meaning of Domestic
Photography. London: Virago, 1994.
Rugg, Linda Haverty.Picturing Ourselves; Photography and
Autobiography. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1997.
Zelizer, Barbie.Remembering to Forget; Holocaust Memory
Through the Camera’s Eye. Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1998.i Other Japanese camera companies can trace their
origins to the first third of the twentieth century,
though none would become major forces in the inter-
national market until at least the 1950s.
ii In 1981, the sale of 35 mm cameras manufactured by
Japanese companies peaked at more than seven and a
half million units.
iii After 1973, Super-8 was available with magnetic
striped film that offered a limited sound on film
potential. This was of less interest to family filmmak-
ing than it was to low budget documentary.FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHY