Reflections Photography Research- Jo Spence

I began by looking at a photographer related to my less developed idea of recreating family images. This idea was my least favoured and least develop mainly for the fact that I have seen it done so many times before. Therefore I thought it would be helpful to research into Jo Spence and her 'Beyond the Family Album' work so that I can better understand why so many artist take this approach. Also this may help me gain some inspiration for my other family photo related project idea of removing myself from the picture. I want to see how manipulating family photos will change the meaning to the audience but also to myself on a personal level.

Jo Spence (1932 - 1992)

She began her career in photography as mainly commercial taking on work as a wedding photographer but in the early 70's her work shifted away from commercial and she began to take a much more of an interest in documentation photography. She questioned the stability of the economy and advertising in her work. She created many different collections of work but one of her most well know which I hd heard of previously to this was her work which represented her struggles with cancer. She was featured in a lot of feminist magazines at the time for her very bold work an she also began a very educational figure through her photography as it inspired new photographers to take this same graphic and documentation angle on there work.

The piece 'Beyond the family album' was made to be a reflection on the fact that there are so many things which are underrepresented in the family album such as divorce and illness. We deliberately don't capture these memories which in a way makes the family photo albums fake. She went against this fakery by finding ways to represent herself realistically apposing the behaviour that was expected of her at the time and the state of normality which she was made to have in the family photos. A found a website which says this work aims 'to better understand how, through visual forms of representation, our subjective views of selves, and others, are structured and held across the institutions of media, and through hierarchical social relationships.' I feel in my eyes that she is basically trying to document the parts of the family life which get left out of the family album. Here are some of the pieces:

My personal response to this work is that it uses this very simplistic technique of recreating family images but to say something really controversial about the whole concept of the family relationships. She feels like as a family instead of documenting ourselves realistically instead we are building this fake story only keeping the memories from certain times and having very forced images of them. A counter argument to this would be that it is because as humans we cherish the happy moments much more than we do the sad and this is why we only really photograph the happy times. I do also see the point of view she is coming from trying to make a statement about her personal life.

After doing this research I feel like my two ideas based on the family album don't have a very strong meaning on concept behind wanting to do them. This leads me to maybe leave these ideas for the time being and start focusing my attention and research on to my Traces idea as I feel this is more of an original idea but also in my head its more of a developed concept.