Whither the Family Album Now?

Family albums and the concomitant snapshot image represent a radical shift of control and authorship in photography from the professional to the amateur photographer.

From the outset of photography, the family has been a popular subject. First only for the elite, as it was with portraiture, but as the cost of the technology came down and the processes simplified, more and more people got in on the act. The birth of the snapshot made photography the province of everyone.

Snapshot photography has its own set of rules – informality, casual poses in complete contrast to the stiffly contrived attitudes struck by the Victorians (which were partly enforced by long exposures, it’s true).

“Snapshots mirrored family life as it ought to be, or as what we would wish it to be. Carefully coded, they acted as a talisman against the real” Williams, V 1994. Who’s looking a the family? Publication accompanying an exhibition at the Barbican p13

Kodak: "you press the button, we do the rest"

A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it. Susan Sontag 'In Plato's Cave' On Photography, 1977

The Family Album is first and foremost a private collection of images, shared with the inner circle of friends and family. But then what?

The physical manifestation of the family album gets passed down through the generations, sometimes carefully preserved but more often abandoned to the attic. At some point, most are discarded (do you know where your antecedents' photographs are?)

Things are different now. Many people scan their family archives and publish the images on the web:

Others just bypass the paper copy altogether and publish directly online:

Lorie Novak’s Collected Visions is possibly the biggest 'Family Album' on the web. To date, 300 people have contributed over 3000 pictures form all over the world to this site. More are invited and uploaded regularly. In another section of the site, there are over 250 photo essays exploring how photographs shape our memories.

Some traditional Family Albums even end up on eBay:

Enter the Box Family....

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URLs

All sites accessed and working 4/07/06

Family Photo Album

Wegman Family Album

Jen and Pete's trip to Italy

Lorie Novak’s Collected Visions

EBay