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:The Art of Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century England
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Perry, Ruth |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | Every picture tells a story. The story told by posed portraits of the family is one of change over time; family groups look different at different times. Thus the Victorian middle-class family is typically photographed in an indoor ‘domestic’ setting, its members unsmiling, connected to each other by the touch of a hand on a shoulder. Take a look at professional photographers’ web pages today, however, and the modern family is often outdoors, caught in movement, grinning, and much more affectionate than its grim-faced, motionless ancestors. What do these different pictorial narratives of the family mean? Most obviously, it is a story of developments in the technology for capturing images. Early cameras required their sitters to remain immobile for long periods of time. Yet, as the historiography of the family reveals, we seek deeper meanings in such a development in representation. Does it illustrate a shift from a hierarchical family with weak emotional bonds to a more loving, closer, and, therefore, happier family? Does it indicate different kinds of power and gender relationships between family members? Is it, even, the fabled transition from the ‘traditional’ to ‘modern’ family? |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://reviews.history.ac.uk/printpdf/review/558 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
