ABSTRACT

Photos were not always treated as particularly precious objects. The practice of taking photographs was also trivialised. The fact that family photos are boring because they are 'samey' is a point made repeatedly by the critical literature on family photographs. The truthfulness of photos has been the subject of much theoretical discussion, most of it centred on the claims made by Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida. Indexicality is an affordance of photographic images. Truth claims using photographs are thus contingent and depend as much on the viewer as on the image itself. Sending photographs to family members clearly reflected, and reaffirmed, the emotional closeness of family relationships. Printed photographs are extraordinarily difficult to dispose of. The indexicality of the photographic image also in part explains why, for author's interviewees at least, a rather traditional form of family photography continues to be practised.