‘What it seems the family album does is to tell the story from the adults’ point of view, particularly from a patriarchal point of view… it’s telling the story in that way, all the highlights and ideal parts, that creates a whole set of gaps and absences, that you can’t fill the rest in.’

-Jo Spence

I am a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on the taboo subjects of women’s everyday lives using my own auto ethnographic lens. Here this adapted ‘counter’ photography series looks inward at us as a family during the covid-19 pandemic, using the couch as an anchor. The series portrays  re-photography in linear time and highlights newly forming identity, new rituals merged with old, along with the narrative and performance of everyday family life. Therefore, reflecting on the adaptability of this new normal way of forced domestic family living. 

A concept of three chosen images of a possible five that were taken was soon decided and to carry on, until life regained some normality. Little did I know how massive this undertaking was to become. 

Starting on Thursday the 19th March and carried on until Thursday the 3rd September, equating to 504 final images. The final collection showing the realities of highs and lows of family life in lockdown, and even unplanned emergency major surgery as I left the project (and home), giving strict instructions for my family to carry it on while I was in hospital, and therefore documented my return. 

People/families always have a level of habit and rituals in life, magnified by lockdown. Somedays they are totally to be in-braced and relished, other times it feels like you are trapped in a rut of our own making. A surreal mixture of the films Groundhog Day, 28 Days Later and Rear Window. Even the picture taking its self became another monotonous task as the months passed.

Conceptually and theoretically the work has been underpinned with Jo Spence’s  foundation of what she coined, ‘counter photography’. Looking into the idea of the family album being non-representative of realistic family life. Family albums do indeed show the good and posed side of the domestic setting, but omits the realities. The same could be true for peoples social media feeds today. 

The final out come of the project was to address this, showing both the highs and lows of this pandemic. The banality of life, sometimes in performance. 

Website     www.nlewis-dixon.com

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