Your family as a subject

Dad. Denver, Colorado, 2012

Sometimes we forget that there is interesting photographic subject matter right next to us–right in our own family and in our own homes.

Have you thought about using your family members as the guinea pigs to help you learn the art of portrait photography? (As I did with my father in the above image.) How about documenting a certain aspect of the life of a loved one? (The above image of my Dad was made moments before he was to have his left ear cochlear implant mounted and turned on.) And, yes, I am talking about something a bit more creative than snapshots of the kids’ soccer games.

To give you a more professional example, Sally Mann, a photographer with an exceptional body of work, is now documenting the slow deterioration of her husband, Larry, who suffers from muscular dystrophy. This is interesting on many levels…it is certain to be a difficult act of love…it promises to be powerful work…it forces us to confront the issue of our physical vulnerabilities and our mortality…it brings up issues of privacy…and so on. Her family was also the subject of some of her earlier work which included many powerful images of her children, some controversial, which was published in a collection called Immediate Family.

So, don’t forget that there may be great subjects right in your own home for pushing your photography on to a deeper level. I write this as sort of a promise to myself to work on “Dad” as a serious, long-term photography project. Now, I just need to get him a little more accustomed to the camera…