Family frames : photography, narrative, and postmemory / Marianne Hirsch.

[Place of publication not identified] : [The author], ©2012.

xiv, 304 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Facsimile reprint. Originally published: Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, ©1997.

"Hirsch provocatively explores the photographic conventions for constructing family relationships and discusses artistic strategies for challenging those constructions. When we capture our family photographically, we are often responding to an idealized image. Contemporary artists and writers, Hirsch shows, have exposed the gap between lived reality and a perceived ideal to witness contradictions that shape visual representations of parents and children, siblings, lovers, or extended families. Exploring fiction, "imagetexts," and photographic essays, she elucidates their subversive devices, giving particular attention to literal and metaphorical masks. While permitting false impressions and misreadings, family photos have also proved a powerful means for shaping personal and cultural memory. Hirsch highlights a striking example: a wide variety of family pictures surviving the Holocaust and the wrenching displacements of late twentieth-century history. Whether personal treasures, artistic constructions, or museum installations, these images link private memory to collective history."--Jacket.

English

September 19, 2019

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-288) and index.

Folklore.