Understanding The Family Album



 
The Family Album


The family album is a relatively recent invention. It was not until the Spring of 1862, when the visiting card photograph became all the rage that the first commercial photograph albums began to be produced. Photographs had been available to the middle class since the 1840s but the carte de visite made it both fashionable and inexpensive to have any number of small portraits made. With so many photographs being shared, exchanged and collected, it's small wonder that the photograph album was born. But that was just the beginning for the photograph album. Before the carte de viste a few creative souls had pasted salt prints into books with blank pages. With the profusion of card photographs and miniature tintypes, the family album graced every parlor with hundreds of family photographs. When the snapshot camera made it possible for anyone to take a picture, the large scrapbook family albums took on aspects of a diary. With the digital future of photography and the world wide web, the possibilities for the family album are unlimited.



 
Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory
Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory Hirsch, Marianne
Hardcover - 336 pages (November 1997) Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; ISBN: 0674292650 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.93 x 9.49 x 6.51

If you have ever wondered about the role family photographs play in our lives, then this book will interest you. We all encounter family photographs in daily life without giving them a second thought. They might be a snapshot casually taped to the refrigerator or a formal portrait hung in a gilded frame, carelessly crammed into shoeboxes or painstakingly cataloged in treasured albums. Hirsch shows how photography has become the family's primary means of self-representation and uncovers both the deception and power behind this visual record. And explores photographic convention for constructing family relationships and the difference between idealized images and reality.
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The Familial Gaze
Hirsch, Marianne (Editor)
Paperback - 400 pages (December 1998) University Press of New England; ISBN: 0874518954 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.06 x 9.25 x 6.03


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Family Snaps: The Meanings of Domestic Photography
Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (ed).
(1991) London: Virago.

This book comes highly reccommended, but I do not have it myself.
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Picturing Ourselves: Photography & Autobiography
Linda Haverty Rugg.
Hardcover - 286 pages (December 1997) University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 0226731464 ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.04 x 9.34 x 6.34


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Legacy : A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History
Legacy : A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Personal History Linda Spence.

Paperback - 150 pages (October 1997) Ohio Univ Pr (Trd); ISBN: 080401003X ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.56 x 8.54 x 6.06
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The Snapshot Photograph - The Rise of Popular Photography 1888-1939
Brian Coe and Paul Gates.
Ash & Grant Ltd., London, 1977 ISBN 0 904069 13 3 and 0 904069 14 1




 
Kodak and the English Market Between the Wars
John Taylor.
JOURNAL OF DESIGN HISTORY 7 1 (1994): 29-42.




 
My Life is in that Box: Photography and Popular Consciousness TEN.8 34 (1989): 34-41.
Jeremy Seabrook.




 
(1993) Beyond the Smile: The Therapeutic Use of the Photograph, London: Routledge.
Linda Berman.




 
(1981) Family Photographs: Content, Meaning, Effect
Hirsch, Julia
New York: Oxford University Press.




 
Family Photographs : Content, Meaning, and Effect
Hirsch, Julia


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The Way We Looked : The Meaning and Magic of Family Photographs
Noren, Catherine
Lodestar Books, NY, 1983, Hardcover. This unusual book shows you how to look at your family photographs and interpret what you see. Includes tips for taking your family photos and putting together a family picture album


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