Domesticity Redux
Photographs by Ben Alper, Matthew Crowther, Stefanie Fiore, Elizabeth Fleming, Lee Gainer, Erin Nelson, Donald Rasmussen, Justin James Reed, Sean Stewart, Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, Tribble & Mancenido, and Paris Visone
How do photographers capture the domestic? For emerging artists this question is particularly central as so many start out their careers and investigations of the world by documenting family life. Others use their common surroundings as a staging ground for ideas pertaining to the human condition. Even the most banal subjects can take on the grandeur of sublime landscapes in the hands of a seasoned "homebody."
However, one cannot deny, let alone forget, that these photographers are working against our own ideas of domesticity. Comfort, pain, happiness and loss, emotions which are all "familial" to what makes one human, can be hard to convey when our image memory is so tied to a subjective model of the vernacular. If anything, the most successful domestic photographs allow us to reflect, discover and challenge our own history, declaring the subject of "home" as one of the most important tasks a photographer can undertake.
In this group portfolio we take a look at twelve photographers who turn their lens on the familiar, an extraordinary look at what photography does best; a re-framing of the mundane.
