New Family

New Family Documents
Home Movie (2007) and New Family (2007-2008)
We narrate our lives through our documents, our photographs and videos. A family’s happiness can be charted by the bulk of family documents (wedding photographs, holiday photographs, etc.) that they have accumulated over a period of time. I reclaimed the role of the anonymous cameraman in the making of the home movie, typically the father or mother. I recorded the video over dinner in a variety of strangers homes and edited this movie together, as if it were the movie of one large family. It drifts in and out of the tropes of what makes the genre of a home movie unique (shaky camera work, long static shots of nothing, a father figure introducing the proudest features of the home) and my fantasy version of a perfected home movie, including a theatrical, plaintive soundtrack, ending with a cup of coffee and a loving glance from a stranger. “New Family” is a series of 25 studio portraits. These pictures examine the construction of family through the construction of the family portrait. In my own life, I do not know half of my family, including many half brothers and sisters. The last time I saw my father, I was 8 months old, which is to say that I have never actually seen him. As a consequence, strangers take on a new meaning: the average stranger might be related to me. We could be family. I approached strangers at the mall and asked if they would pose in a family portrait with me. The final product is a singular document, purchased from the portrait studio. In continuing this project I am narrating a new life for myself, and building a family album that is simultaneously possible and impossible.

New Family #3, 2007

New Family #10, 2008

New Family #1, 2007

New Family #7, 2007

New Family #9, 2008

New Family #5, 2007

New Family #2, 2007

New Family #13, 2008

New Family #15, 2008

New Family Installation Image, 2007-2008

Home Movie (still image), 2007