Doing family photography : the domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment PDF
Preview Doing family photography : the domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment
Doing Family Photography The Domestic, The Public and The Politics of Sentiment Gillian Rose Doing Family PhotograPhy re-materialising Cultural geography Dr mark Boyle, Department of geography, University of Strathclyde, UK and Professor Donald mitchell, maxwell School, Syracuse University, USa nearly 25 years have elapsed since Peter Jackson’s seminal call to integrate cultural geography back into the heart of social geography. During this time, a wealth of research has been published which has improved our understanding of how culture both plays a part in, and in turn, is shaped by social relations based on class, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, sexuality and so on. in spite of the achievements of this mountain of scholarship, the task of grounding culture in its proper social contexts remains in its infancy. this series therefore seeks to promote the continued significance of exploring the dialectical relations which exist between culture, social relations and space and place. its overall aim is to make a contribution to the consolidation, development and promotion of the ongoing project of re-materialising cultural geography. Other titles in the series Cultural Capitals revaluing the arts, remaking Urban Spaces Louise C. Johnson iSBn 978 0 7546 4977 9 Critical toponymies the Contested Politics of Place naming Edited by Lawrence D. Berg and Jani Vuolteenaho iSBn 978 0 7546 7453 5 Cultural landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities representation of Powers and needs Mariusz Czepczynski iSBn 978 0 7546 7022 3 towards Safe City Centres? remaking the Spaces of an old-industrial City Gesa Helms iSBn 978 0 7546 4804 8 Fear: Critical geopolitics and Everyday life Edited by Rachel Pain and Susan J. Smith iSBn 978 0 7546 4966 3 Doing Family Photography the Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment gillian roSE The Open University, UK © gillian rose 2010 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. gillian rose has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, gU9 7Pt Vt 05401-4405 England USa www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data rose, gillian, 1962- Doing family photography : the domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment. -- (re-materialising cultural geography) 1. Photography of families--Social aspects. 2. Photographs as information resources. i. title ii. Series 779.2’01-dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Doing family photography : the domestic, the public, and the politics of sentiment / by gillian rose. p. cm. -- (re-materialisin g cultural geography) includes bibliographical references and index. iSBn 978-0-7546-7732-1 (hardback) -- iSBn 978-0-7546-9450-2 (ebook) 1. Photography--Social aspects. 2. Photographs--Psychological aspects. 3. Family archives. 4. Family. 5. manners and customs. tr183.D65 2010 770--dc22 2009045896 iSBn: 978-0-7546-7732-1 (hbk) iSBn: 978-0-7546-9450-2 (ebk) Contents Preface vii 1 introduction 1 2 how to look at Family Photographs: Practices, objects, Subjects and Places 11 3 What is Done with Family Snaps? 25 4 What happens with this Doing? Family, Domestic Space and mothering 41 5 the Circulation of Family Photographs in the Visual Economy 59 6 Family Photos going Public 75 7 the Politics of Sentiment: Picturing the missing and the Dead in london, July 2005 91 8 looking again, Ethically, at Family Snaps in the mass media 107 9 Conclusions: Family Photographs, Domestic and Public, and the Contemporary Visual Economy 125 Bibliography 137 Index 151 This page has been left blank intentionally Preface this book has been developing over a number of years, and it is impossible to list properly now all the people who have helped to bring it to fruition. most of all I’d like to thank all my interviewees, without whom the first part of the book would not exist. i hope they feel that all the work, thought and love they put into their family snaps has in some way been acknowledged here. it has also always been a great pleasure to talk about this work to academic audiences, who have very often been willing to share their thoughts and reflections on their own family photographic practices, as well as commenting on the more conceptual aspects of my arguments. i started this project when i began work at the open University, and colleagues there have been a source of support and inspiration throughout. Versions of parts of this book have been published elsewhere. Parts of Chapter 5 appeared in ‘Domestic spacings and family photography: a case study’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28 (2003), 5–18 and in ‘“you just have to make a conscious effort to keep snapping away, i think”: a case study of family photos, mothering and familial space’, in S hardy and C Wiedmer (eds) Motherhood and Space: Configurations of the Maternal through Politics, Home, and the Body (Palgrave macmillan, 2005, pp. 221–40); parts of Chapter 3 appeared as ‘“Everyone’s cuddled up and it just looks really nice”: the emotional geography of some mums and their family photos’, Social and Cultural Geography, 5 (2004), 549–64 (http://www.informaworld.com); a version of Chapter 8 appeared as ‘Who cares for which dead and how: British newspaper reporting of the bombs in london, July 2005’, Geoforum 40 (2009), 46–54; and parts of Chapter 8 appeared as ‘Spectres and spectacle: london 7 July 2005’, New Formations 62 (2008), 45–59. The transcription of the first set of interviews was funded by a small grant from the British academy. i’d also like to thank marie gillespie for granting permission for me to access the Shifting Securities database from the Economic and Social research Council research grant rES-223-25-063 at http://www.mediatingsecurity.com/index.htm, which is also available from the Economic and Social Data Service at http://www.esds.ac.uk. While my own family photograph collection contains no images of this project, of course, it is full of pictures of giorgio and lydia growing up. this book is for them, with all my love. gillian rose For Giorgio and Lydia Chapter 1 introduction i can’t remember when it was, exactly, but i do remember sitting at the kitchen table one autumn evening, with a half-full photograph album open in front of me, and next to it, a big pile of photos, a pair of scissors, a pen and a pack of those annoying sticky photo corners. i had become a mum about six months before and, like very many new mothers, i was both exhausted and taking the time to make a photograph album of our baby. i looked up from selecting photos and inventing captions to see my partner absorbed in something else entirely, and it struck me: why was i spending my time doing this? Why were the photos of our new baby so important to me? Shouldn’t i be sleeping, or ironing baby clothes, or reading a novel or something? and why was it always me that found the time to organise our family photos? We both took photos, after all; why didn’t my partner want to stick them in the album occasionally? and i found, talking to other mothers, that i wasn’t alone in being the one who ended up doing various things with family snaps: getting them developed, sorting them out, making albums, putting them in frames, sending them to other family members, making sure they were stored safely. Some time later, I decided to find out more about why photos were so important to so many mothers. So i started to interview women with young children about their family photographs. i visited other mums in their houses, and over cups of tea and biscuits we talked about family snaps. We looked at albums and sorted through boxes of photos, and we almost always walked around their house looking at photographs in every room. We talked about taking photographs and getting them printed; we discussed the merits of different sorts of frames and albums; we discussed why some photos were out on display and others weren’t; we talked about who got sent which photographs and why. then, in a move that is central to the broader argument of this book about photography, i found myself starting to think about family photography not simply as a collection of images, or as a textual archive, or as an ideology, as so many critics have done, but rather as something that people do: that is, as a social practice. not long after i’d started interviewing mothers about their family snaps, similar sorts of photographs started to make quite other sorts of appearances: not in houses, this time, but in a range of public spaces. after the attacks on the World trade Center in new york on 11 September 2001, for example, family photos became part of posters of those missing. Stuck on subway walls and bus shelters, they pleaded for anyone who’d seen that person to phone their family. Family snaps of some of the people missing after the tsunami that devastated large areas around the indian ocean on 26 December 2004 also went public, particularly
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