Sony RX1, 35mm f2 Carl Zeiss
ISO200, f/2.8, 1/125, raw
Thirty First and Last day of “Sacra Famiglia”.
Me: Father, Husband, Son, Son-in-Law, Brother-in-Law, Nephew, Cousin, and Uncle.
With my self portrait I close the series “Sacra Famiglia”, from tomorrow I’ll be working on the twelfth and last series of this 365 project.
This theme has been fun because it got me a way to introduce almost all of my family members to both my studio and my new job. They all enjoyed being under the strobes for once and I feel we created some precious memories together. Now, the theme is over because 31 days have passed, but my family is larger than that. I still have one aunt and one uncle, five cousins with husbands and wives, plus my mother’s cousins (which are very close) in my agenda. Not to talk about Claudia’s aunts and uncles! I want to track every one of them down even if the theme is over, just to complete this weirdly aged album of family portraits.
I hope you enjoyed the technique and the people, their personalities, similarities, and so on. I’ll see you tomorrow with a totally different theme to develop for the ned thirty one days. Cheers!
Here comes my eleventh review. Sorry for beeing a day late, I was busy with other photographs. 😀
SACRA FAMIGLIA, REVIEW:
As an art form photography has all sort of characters and one of them is nostalgia. Photographs take us to past, remind us how life was before and let us feel the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. This character is one of the very reason why people take photographs – to remember what they were and give it meaning. Nowadays when photography is everywhere people take more pictures than ever, and surely it is with the aid of all sort of mobile gadgets. If pictures are taken more than ever, they are also consumed in a accelerated speed. I feel this also changes how people want to experience nostalgia. You can see vintage looking selfies everywhere and with the aid of computer software people don’t have to wait years for nostalgia to develop. Slap the filter, upload it to Facebook and you have created an image which convoys that feeling of time – and is consumed right afterwards.
With your eleventh theme ‘Sacra Famiglia’ you are too pursuing that feeling of nostalgia. You want to capture your family as it is today, only to be found years after. At least that’s the way how I see it. You have wanted pictures to have that something special, but it’s difficult job in world where time and nostalgia is added to so many pictures. In my eye, using a field camera you have succeeded to introduce an element of dignity and time into these photographs in a very elegant way. This is a one-off idea, which makes it unique and makes pictures stand out from the rest of crowd where nostalgia is searched as well. They also look like they belong to same family, so I take it as an indicator of success as well. Using the field camera you also attach these images to tradition of family portraits early 19th- and 20th-century. In a way you are adjusting yourself into that same tradition, which broadens the interpretation of these pictures. You share the same mission with other photographers who were here before you. To capture and remember.
Why did I like this theme: You have found a unique and one-off idea to make a successful family portrait series. In a very human way it adds dignity to all those different persons and makes them look like they belong together. I see this as an example of successful ‘slow’ photography in a world where everything tries to catch your attention and is effected accordingly. Even if you have an unique and interesting idea here, photographs themselves are still very plausible, down to earth and people on front. Would have been also interesting to hear what they think of these photographs themselves.