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Photograph of a gallery room with dark grey walls and tan wood floor. There are large photographs in film strip style on the walls in rows of three.
Now on View Virtually

Family Fictions

In photography’s earliest days, having family pictures made was an extravagance.  Today, we are inundated with images that can be made and shared instantaneously.  Think about the last time you took a family photograph.  How did you pose, who were you with, and what did you do with that photograph after it was taken?  Would anyone outside of your family be able tell anything about you or your family relationships from that image?  While we may not think about the artistry or aesthetics of family photographs, we often view them as precious or personal precisely because of the stories we know behind the images.  What happens when the family photographs are not accompanied by a knowable family history?

Liz Albert’s series, Family Fictions, explores this conundrum.  Recognizing that family pictures are usually only interesting to those in, or adjacent to the photographs, Liz Albert turned to eBay and delved into other people’s family stories in order to reinvent family narratives.  In looking through thousands of slides from the 1950s-1970s being offered for sale, she noted the prevalence of images of vacations, train travel, and women (often nudes), along with a relative lack of diversity.  Albert ultimately bought just under 200 slides and enlarged and printed them as pairs, creating scenes that are widely open to interpretation.  She doesn’t know the reality behind any of the images, so she creates a new one, often tinged with dark humor.

Liz Albert asks us to consider what we are looking at when the history behind the images becomes unknowable, and how we can remake that history to relate to our own selves.

Gallery: Works On Paper
Dates: Now on View Virtually
Participating artists: Liz Albert
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Two old colored photographs side by side. On the left is a young couple kissing laying down on a stripped blanket. On the right is a young boy in a blue sweater and glasses seated in the front seat of an old car looking down at a map.
Liz Albert, A Map to Lead the Way, Archival Inkjet Print
Two old colored photographs side by side. On the left is an old kitchen with white cabinets and stove with a woman crouched at the stove looking back at the photographer. On the right is a man in a brown suit taking a photograph of a woman in a blue and orange dress with low shoulders who is on the ground supported by her left arm looking up at the man taking the photograph.
Liz Albert, Doubletake , 2018, Archival Inkjet Print
Two old colored photographs side by side. On the left is a young couple kissing laying down on a stripped blanket. On the right is a young boy in a blue sweater and glasses seated in the front seat of an old car looking down at a map.
Liz Albert
A Map to Lead the Way , Archival Inkjet Print
Two old colored photographs side by side. On the left is an old kitchen with white cabinets and stove with a woman crouched at the stove looking back at the photographer. On the right is a man in a brown suit taking a photograph of a woman in a blue and orange dress with low shoulders who is on the ground supported by her left arm looking up at the man taking the photograph.
Liz Albert
Doubletake , 2018, Archival Inkjet Print
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