ABSTRACT
Family photos are a particular sort of image, but, this chapter emphasises, to stop there in their analysis is to misunderstand their power and effects. This chapter examines how the relation between a photograph and what is done with it should be theorised. It emphasises the importance of place to social relations. Don Slater remarks that family snaps are 'generally regarded as a great wasteland of trite and banal self-representation', while Jessica Evans claims that it is in family photography that 'the most stultified and stereotyped repetoire of composition, subject-matter and style resides'. Hence the substantial body of work on family photographs that focuses on their content in order to examine the genre's reiteration of social positions and relations. Specific practices of production, circulation, display and viewing constitute family photographs as particular kinds of images, then: family photos cannot be defined simply by their visual content.
