Family Pictures traces the ways in which artists have used photographs of family to deftly challenge and transform both artistic and popular images of African-American life since the postwar period. Coming of age in Harlem during the 1940s, Roy DeCarava reacted against what he saw as superficial stereotypes and “sociological” studies of his neighborhood by mostly outsiders, including the Photo League’s “Harlem Document.”
With the aid of a Guggenheim Fellowship, DeCarava set out to create expressive photographs of domestic life in his community and eventually published 120 pictures along with text by Langston Hughes in The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), a powerful commentary on issues of family and racism as well as the particular and universal realities of daily existence. Taking DeCarava’s first project as a jumping off point, this exhibition looks at photographers and artists who have similarly documented family life or their own families, including LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lyle Ashton Harris, Deana Lawson, Gordon Parks, Sondra Perry, Carrie Mae Weems, and more.
