Kira Flowers 

“As photography captures family life into snapshots it continues familial myths, while seeming merely to record actual moments in family history… Family photography can reduce the strains of family life by keeping an image of “togetherness”, even though it can exacerbate them by creating images that real families cannot uphold”. (Hirsch, 1997)

 

At the age of 13 Carys became orphaned and homeless, moving around between family and friends. She is now 18 and finds herself in the same vicious cycle of having to constantly adapt to new surroundings and people. Carys currently spends the majority of her time living with family in a crowded house with no room of her own. She is lacking the stability and comfort in her life that having a place to call “home” is typically associated with. She feels a burden on family and friends and is met with feelings of immense sadness and pressures to become independent and find her place in the world.

 

From the moment the camera entered the sphere of the everyday and domestic, it became the family’s main tool of self-knowledge and representation. Marianne Hirsch says in her book “Family Frames” that photography’s social functions are tied to the ideology of modern family. Explaining that while the photograph is used as an instrument to display the cohesion and “togetherness” of the family, it simultaneously continues familial myths which are disguised as actual moments in the family’s history. Hirsch further explains that creating this ideological image can exacerbate strains on family life, as real families cannot uphold this image.

 

It is this ideology of family and home that plays a role in how Carys envisions her life to be. She is searching for basic needs such as comfort and stability, but is also seeking an ideological myth of perfection.

 

There is an unseen area in the family album which disguises the sadness and struggles that are connected to family life. This project goes beyond the conventional use of family photography to reveal the complicated stories and emotions of family and domestic life.

 

Rather than attempting to represent family life and feeding into familial myths, I have instead approached this body of work intimately. Working closely with my sister to reveal her personal feelings, thoughts and anxieties surrounding family and home. Or as Roland Barthes suggests, “I was interested in photography only for sentimental reasons; I wanted to explore it not as a question (a theme) but as a wound: I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe, and I think”. Carys story is personal, but one that also questions, argues and disrupts the ideology of family and home.