From 1839 when it was invented, photography has served to create
portraits of individuals, and soon thereafter portraits of families,
later placed in photo albums. Photography, collected and archived,
entered the intimate sphere, enabling people to arrange the fragmented
images of their lives as they saw fit. Following its forerunners
(miniature portraits, silhouettes, physionotraces), the photographic
portrait also served the new expectations of the emerging urban
bourgeoisie and its need for social representation. Studios opened up in
cities everywhere to meet the fast growing demand. In addition, the new
medium distinguished itself with its esthetic superiority.
"Even as it emerged, although the technique was still very primitive,
photography enjoyed an exceptional quality of artistic finish" (Gisèle
Freund). What can photography show us to day of the visible and
invisible aspects of family sociology? "How do the roles we expect them
to play betray the emotional realities and complexities of lived life?"
wonders Daniel Mendelsohn, in his introduction entitled "Unknown
Faces/Redeeming Structures".
#11;By creating this corpus of fixed black and white images, each
composed in a large 5' x 7' frame, the photographer has produced a work
of anthropological scope, reaching beyond representation by placing the
subject at palpable distance, thereby objectifying it. What should we
think of these seemingly impassive faces and their hypnotic gazes, what
should we think of these postures, seated or standing? What goes on
within these families and outside the frame? The use of a rigid protocol
similar in all sessions makes every family portraits intriguing, and
encourages our reflection.
Inspired by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose esthetics of
objectivity tended towards minimalism, Isabelle Boccon-Gibod, a
self-made artist, with an interest for technique, has played with a
frontality quite similar to that of the Bechers, resting on the idea
that our bodies, when joined together, form a sort of architecture. The
idea, also, that a face, deprived of its smile, offers a neutrality of
expression worth considering: masks fall and reveal a nakedness (naked
truth?) to be admired and deciphered beyond the appearances of social
games. She was guided, yet not limited, by this principle: the image of
a family seen as a façade-like structure, in which faces are the
windows.
