It’s not gender that makes a family; it’s love. You don’t need a mother and a father; you don’t necessarily even need two parents. You just need someone who’s got your back.
Jodi Picoult
Introduction
The solstice, a time when the earth begins another turn around our little star. In many parts of the world, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time when family and friends come together to remember the past twelve months and look forward to the next. Seasonal festivals celebrate the things we share, each in their culturally distinctive way. And so, Talking Pictures marks the year-end with a collective reflection on this enduring, multivalent institution. Ten artists and an archivist each select a photograph that speaks to them about the significance of family in its many ways of being and being understood. The biological intergenerational family and the family of choice rather than biology… and all the wonderful possibilities in between. Kith and Kin.
Alasdair Foster
Diana Blok
The Netherlands
This is my dear friend Geraldine with her three sons, two of whom are identical twins. After I had photographed them intuitively in a variety of ways I asked if they had a specific idea of how they would like to pose. One of the sons proposed that the three young men carry their mother in their arms, just as she had carried each of them as children. This felt like the perfect act of gratitude depicting the affection and openness inherent in their relationship. And so it was done.
More about Diana Blok here…
John Paul Evans
United Kingdom
In the series ‘Till Death Us Do Part’, my husband Peter and I act out absurdist domestic scenarios. As an academic, I have always been critical of what the family photo album represents in terms of normality and otherness. It is a genre that provides little to evidence the kind of love and commitment that Peter and I have shared in our thirty-four years together. As Peter is now in his eighties, I felt an urgent need to make work together exploring this missing representation of what it means to be an intergenerational couple, a same-sex family. And, in a social group in which flamboyance can be assumed a given, these images also transgress notions of normality through the very ordinariness of the suit and tie.
More about John Paul Evans here…
Alan Griffiths/Luminous Lint *
Canada
© Milton Rogovin – diptych portrait 1989 Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
(catalogue data – [Left] Getty: 2003.80.17.1; Luminous Lint: LL/5989. [Right] Getty: 2003.80.17.2; Luminous Lint: LL/5990)
Milton Rogovin [Cuba 1909–2011] was a socially committed documentary photographer whose images focused on workers involved in heavy industries such as mining and steel production. In his diptych and triptych portraits he showed his subjects in their working clothes and environment, and also at home with their families. In capturing multiple facets of the same person, he was able to say far more about the complexities of an individual than would have been possible with a single occupational or domestic portrait alone. In my view, this use of multiple photographs displays the nobility and physical trials of workers in a very different way from the portraits of, say, Lewis Hine or Sebastião Salgado.
* Founded by Alan Griffiths in 2005, Luminous Lint is an extensive internally networked digital repository of images from the history of photography facilitating research across many lines of enquiry. More about Luminous Lint here…
Mohammad Shahnewaz Khan
Bangladesh
I have two brothers, Arman and Ataul. Our father and mother died two or three years before the pandemic. When the lockdown began, we were all living together with our wives and children as one extended family. I don’t think we noticed how the tensions built between us all. When the break came, it was as if a country split apart, and three new smaller countries emerged. The families separated and we moved to a new home. I think the wounds that were created will never be fully healed.
Yet we continued to feel each other’s emptiness. And, amazingly, after three years of separation, we are going to be united again. The shared family home we are building together is almost finished. It has four floors and each family will live on a separate level. Although we will no longer be living in the same space, it will be our building, our home.
Freedom does not mean separation; freedom lies in unity.
More about Mohammad Shahnewaz Khan here…
Angelika Kollin
Estonia/USA
Three years ago, Valerie’s world was plunged into darkness when she tragically lost her daughter to domestic violence. The light in her heart dimmed, leaving her in the depths of grief.
About a year and a half ago, Valerie took a courageous step and opened a small stall offering her unique blends of tea and products created by local artists. To her surprise, this modest establishment became a gathering place for many young adults locally, mostly artists, seeking a sense of belonging. Along with tea, they found comfort in Valerie’s love and affection.
Valerie’s tea stall provides invaluable support and solace to these young people. They affectionately refer to her as their Hippie Mama, finding in her a refuge during difficult times in their lives. Not a day goes by without Valerie missing her daughter, but she has channelled her grief into creating a meaningful future, offering a place of comfort for others who are struggling.
More about Angelika Kollin here…
Maleonn
China
I didn’t know these people personally, but I’m grateful that they chose to participate in my Studio Mobile project. The costumes they selected are full of fun. He is one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, superheros from the past, and she is being Chun-Li from the famous Street Fighter video game. Yet their expressions are dull, tortured by life.
I was single when this photo was taken, so I just thought it was a funny idea. Later, I also had children and gradually came to understand the deeper meaning of family life. Triviality and exhaustion are just superficial phenomena. There is a huge sense of happiness under the surface. Parenthood is hard work but it is also much joy.
More about Maleonn here…
Arno Rafael Minkkinen
Finland/USA
At this point, one third of our dear son’s life had been spent in Finland. Those two years were enough for him to have picked up street Finnish so well that only every fourth word would be English. But we were back in the USA here. The 1930s Linhof 4×5 was no stranger staring at him. He knew where the lens was; the sound of the Polaroid film packet when it flew off the rollers. “Not bad, dad,” he said. “How about another?” I asked. “Just one more,” he replied. He knew we already had it. Later that day – or was it a week after – I brought over half-a-pound of photographs from our time in Finland and a sixty-minute cassette and tape recorder. “Fill both sides and tell me about as many of the pictures as you like, and the cassette is yours.” It was another way to take a picture of him, to create an evidentiary document that, like the photograph, let him know he had indeed spoken two languages simultaneously just as he had proof in the image of the bond between father and son.
More about Arno Rafael Minkkinen here…
Tim Smith
Canada
Family and friends laugh as bride and groom Deborah Hofer and Derek Maendel are pressured into a kiss during the farewell party for the bride at Deerboine Colony. In Hutterite society the bride always marries into the groom’s colony. Here community is more important than individuality or family. Community is at the heart of their society and Hutterites typically experience less of the loneliness and isolation prevalent in the modern world. They work, play, celebrate, and mourn together. Another way of looking at this is that, for Hutterites, community is family.
Talking Pictures will publish an interview with Tim Smith in the new year.
Viktoria Sorochinski
Ukraine/Germany
For me, this photo of a beautiful family living in Berlin represents the essence of what family is: a combination of love, tenderness, distance, closeness, tiredness, codependency, loneliness, deep connection, and hope, all merging into a warm beam of light.
More about Viktoria Sorochinski here…
Oleg Videnin
Russia
This is the family of friends I have known for many years. The photograph was taken on the Snezhet River near Bryansk during a pleasant weekend trip. The Panteleev family is Orthodox and, in addition to regular school, the children attend Sunday school at the church. Two of the four children are adopted. Oleg, the head of the family, runs a sawmill. His wife Olga owns a large stable of horses for rent and riding lessons. The family enjoy kayaking, cycling, horse riding, and long walks together. For me, this is a really strong, traditional family. When I look at them, I am happy… and a little jealous.
More about Oleg Videnin here…
Anne Zahalka
Australia
assisted by Allison Rose, friend and neighbour of the family
I photographed the family in their large two-storey house in Fitzroy, Melbourne, some weeks before the artist Polixeni Papapetrou passed away. Her husband Robert holds a painter’s palette, while their son Solomon and daughter Olympia wear costumes they respectively wore in her memorable series, ‘The Ghillies’ and ‘Eden’. Child-sized dolls stand with the grotesque masks featured in ‘The Dreamkeepers’, and, resting in the foreground, are the family’s two rescue greyhounds, Lexi and Mille.
Based on the outcast but adored Addams Family, this portrait expresses a family’s unwavering, unabashed love, and innate loyalty. Poli is a strong matriarchal presence and the worlds she created in her artmaking coexist with the family in a scene that hovers between reality and an imaginary elsewhere.
More about Polixeni Papapetrou here…
Talking Pictures will publish an interview with Anne Zahalka in the new year.
‘Kith & Kin’ is a Talking Pictures original.