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About the PhotographerGillian Laub is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in comparative literature before studying photography at the International Center of Photography, where her love of visual storytelling and family narratives began. Her book of photographs of her family of the last twenty years, Family Matters, was published by Aperture in September 2021, and an exhibition by the same name at the International Center of Photography is on view September 24, 2021–January 10, 2022. |
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Truth in Photography: How did you get started doing your Family Matters series?
Gillian Laub: The family work began really when I was a student at ICP [the International Center of Photography], and it didn't start as a project. It was just something that I did. I started out documenting my grandparents. They were really my first muses. I come from a family of very vibrant characters. As I was finding my way in the world, and as an artist, it was really about exploring my relationships. It was a personal project. It wasn't a project that I had the intention of being seen. When I started photographing, it was 21 years ago. So it was really about how I interacted with my family and how I was celebrating my grandparents through my work.
TiP: What were you trying to convey about your grandparents?
Laub: To me they had this beautiful love story. And after so many years, they were so filled with life, and family, and tradition. All of these marking milestones in our family were such a big deal. And it was almost like I was an anthropologist. I always felt a little bit on the outside: an insider on the outside and outsider on the inside. It is a cliché, but the camera was kind of my recording as an anthropologist, a visual recording in more of an anthropological way. So that's how it really began, because I was fascinated by this family that I came from and wanted to understand it better. My camera helps me understand the world better, that's how I move through the world. I was trying to do that with my relatives.
TiP: Were these photographs in which you interacted with your grandparents? Were they photographs without them paying attention to you? What was the nature of your process?
Laub: It was always a mixture. I always had a snapshot camera, always, always, always. This was before iPhones, obviously. I went through many different snapshot cameras, and I would go to get the 4x6 CVS prints, and I think Canon used to print them. And I put them up on my bulletin board. I remember wanting to recreate these snapshots, because they weren't such good quality. I had a million snapshots of my grandfather in his vegetable garden with his bathing suit on, but none of them were of the quality that I wanted to make a photograph. So I made an appointment with him in 1999 to make his portrait in his vegetable garden. So a lot of the pictures are documenting actual events that happened in my family. And then a lot of them are choreographed from and recreated snapshots that I that I made for my family. So it's a mixture. It's a mixture of both. And hopefully the viewer doesn't know which is which.
Gillian Laub: The family work began really when I was a student at ICP [the International Center of Photography], and it didn't start as a project. It was just something that I did. I started out documenting my grandparents. They were really my first muses. I come from a family of very vibrant characters. As I was finding my way in the world, and as an artist, it was really about exploring my relationships. It was a personal project. It wasn't a project that I had the intention of being seen. When I started photographing, it was 21 years ago. So it was really about how I interacted with my family and how I was celebrating my grandparents through my work.
TiP: What were you trying to convey about your grandparents?
Laub: To me they had this beautiful love story. And after so many years, they were so filled with life, and family, and tradition. All of these marking milestones in our family were such a big deal. And it was almost like I was an anthropologist. I always felt a little bit on the outside: an insider on the outside and outsider on the inside. It is a cliché, but the camera was kind of my recording as an anthropologist, a visual recording in more of an anthropological way. So that's how it really began, because I was fascinated by this family that I came from and wanted to understand it better. My camera helps me understand the world better, that's how I move through the world. I was trying to do that with my relatives.
TiP: Were these photographs in which you interacted with your grandparents? Were they photographs without them paying attention to you? What was the nature of your process?
Laub: It was always a mixture. I always had a snapshot camera, always, always, always. This was before iPhones, obviously. I went through many different snapshot cameras, and I would go to get the 4x6 CVS prints, and I think Canon used to print them. And I put them up on my bulletin board. I remember wanting to recreate these snapshots, because they weren't such good quality. I had a million snapshots of my grandfather in his vegetable garden with his bathing suit on, but none of them were of the quality that I wanted to make a photograph. So I made an appointment with him in 1999 to make his portrait in his vegetable garden. So a lot of the pictures are documenting actual events that happened in my family. And then a lot of them are choreographed from and recreated snapshots that I that I made for my family. So it's a mixture. It's a mixture of both. And hopefully the viewer doesn't know which is which.
TiP: It seems when you ask someone in your family to reenact something they are inevitably acting. They're not just reenacting.
Laub: I don't know if I would say acting. My process of making a portrait of somebody is not asking them to act for me. They're conscious of the camera and being photographed, but I wouldn't say that they're necessarily acting.
TiP: Are you encouraging people to represent themselves as they see themselves? What do you say to someone when you're doing a portrait like that?
Laub: There’s no formula. There's no script. It's really about reading over the room then going with my gut. I don't have a formula for anything. I try to feel the energy of a person and the environment. I lead by my gut, by my emotional makeup, and the interaction I have with the people that I'm photographing. I try to let people be themselves.
TiP: When you talk about your approach to photographing tradition, what does tradition mean to you?
Laub: I have a complicated relationship to the word tradition, because to me, tradition in my life is something that's grounding. And it marks time, and milestones, but it took on a darker meaning. When I was in the south, I kept asking people why they still had segregated proms. The answer was always, “It's just our tradition.” So the word tradition became very loaded to me because it became a euphemism that people used for their racism. They were getting away with racially segregating proms by using the word tradition. It felt like the word was suffocating people from moving forward. You know, they it was it was holding people back from moving forward. Tradition can be just like anything. It has its dark side, but it also has its beautiful side.
TiP: When you're working with people you know well, and people you love in different ways, then the challenge increases in a sense, because it's treading a lot of different fine lines. Talk a little bit about those issues.
Laub: I think making this book was the hardest for me, because when we speak about truth, these are people that I love and want to protect, but I also have to be true to my work. So there's a really, really fine line between protecting the people that you love, and also making the best work. So there was a lot of internal negotiation about that throughout the whole process of making this work, and it is a really, really fine line. And that's why there's a big difference between family photography and photography. Larry Fink told me that he thought that my family work was complacent, because if he would have photographed them, he would have gotten up into their face, and put a flash in their face and exposed all of the scars. I was devastated when he said that to me. Truly devastated, because I really respect his work, and I know that he respects my work, too, so I wanted him to tell me what he thought of this particular work. And I realized, though, that that's not what I was trying to do, I'm not trying to expose... The society pictures that he makes have a point of view. So he wanted me to have that cutting point of view on my own family. And I think that you can be critical and be objective, and also be respectful and loving, and you don't always have to show the darkest to make the best picture.
Laub: I don't know if I would say acting. My process of making a portrait of somebody is not asking them to act for me. They're conscious of the camera and being photographed, but I wouldn't say that they're necessarily acting.
TiP: Are you encouraging people to represent themselves as they see themselves? What do you say to someone when you're doing a portrait like that?
Laub: There’s no formula. There's no script. It's really about reading over the room then going with my gut. I don't have a formula for anything. I try to feel the energy of a person and the environment. I lead by my gut, by my emotional makeup, and the interaction I have with the people that I'm photographing. I try to let people be themselves.
TiP: When you talk about your approach to photographing tradition, what does tradition mean to you?
Laub: I have a complicated relationship to the word tradition, because to me, tradition in my life is something that's grounding. And it marks time, and milestones, but it took on a darker meaning. When I was in the south, I kept asking people why they still had segregated proms. The answer was always, “It's just our tradition.” So the word tradition became very loaded to me because it became a euphemism that people used for their racism. They were getting away with racially segregating proms by using the word tradition. It felt like the word was suffocating people from moving forward. You know, they it was it was holding people back from moving forward. Tradition can be just like anything. It has its dark side, but it also has its beautiful side.
TiP: When you're working with people you know well, and people you love in different ways, then the challenge increases in a sense, because it's treading a lot of different fine lines. Talk a little bit about those issues.
Laub: I think making this book was the hardest for me, because when we speak about truth, these are people that I love and want to protect, but I also have to be true to my work. So there's a really, really fine line between protecting the people that you love, and also making the best work. So there was a lot of internal negotiation about that throughout the whole process of making this work, and it is a really, really fine line. And that's why there's a big difference between family photography and photography. Larry Fink told me that he thought that my family work was complacent, because if he would have photographed them, he would have gotten up into their face, and put a flash in their face and exposed all of the scars. I was devastated when he said that to me. Truly devastated, because I really respect his work, and I know that he respects my work, too, so I wanted him to tell me what he thought of this particular work. And I realized, though, that that's not what I was trying to do, I'm not trying to expose... The society pictures that he makes have a point of view. So he wanted me to have that cutting point of view on my own family. And I think that you can be critical and be objective, and also be respectful and loving, and you don't always have to show the darkest to make the best picture.
TiP: How do you think your work on family photography has evolved?
Laub: My family photographs took a turn in 2016. My main subjects are my sister's family and my parents. The generation before had all passed away, so now I was photographing the next generation, my children, and focusing on my parents. As I formed my own family I was really thinking about my family of origin. Who said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”? I really started to look more critically at my family in a way that I had never done before, that was pretty painful, because they all became Trump supporters. It was a very painful four years for me, and I'm grateful to photography. The camera helped become a mediator between myself and my family. That is really what happened and evolved in the past four years. Only in hindsight did I realize the value of documenting over the past 20 years, because I was looking at my family almost as a microcosm for the American dream, and the building of the American dream.
TiP: Talk a little bit more about this idea of the camera, of photography, being a mediator.
Laub: For my family work, I can say that the camera worked more as a mediator, because the way I approach all of my work, whether I'm commissioned to do work or it's projects that are self-initiated, I go in with a very open mind. So the camera is really my way of exploring and learning. So I had to force myself to work in the same rigor as I would have done if my family was just a subject, with an open mind. I had to force myself to not be judgmental, to not be argumentative, to treat them the way you treat any subject with an open mind and an open heart. And that was hard. That was a challenge for me. When my mom is sitting in her living room with a sign that says women for Trump, how would I approach this? This is my mom who I love, and I just can't even fathom that this is the picture I'm making. No one could have ever predicted or told me that this is the picture I'd be making up my mother in 2016. So I had to check myself. It was really about being fair to my family the way I would try and be fair to any subject.
TiP: Could you talk a little bit about your use of lighting and the role of light in your photos?
Laub: I'm not a major tech nerd at all. Lighting is obviously important. Natural light and ambient light is where I start. The flash, there's always just one flash. I try to make it soft, because I don't like when a flash overpowers, and you become too aware of the flash. But I like a flash enough so you can actually read the details. Because it’s really about highlighting the details for me. Everything is about the details.
Laub: My family photographs took a turn in 2016. My main subjects are my sister's family and my parents. The generation before had all passed away, so now I was photographing the next generation, my children, and focusing on my parents. As I formed my own family I was really thinking about my family of origin. Who said, “An unexamined life is not worth living”? I really started to look more critically at my family in a way that I had never done before, that was pretty painful, because they all became Trump supporters. It was a very painful four years for me, and I'm grateful to photography. The camera helped become a mediator between myself and my family. That is really what happened and evolved in the past four years. Only in hindsight did I realize the value of documenting over the past 20 years, because I was looking at my family almost as a microcosm for the American dream, and the building of the American dream.
TiP: Talk a little bit more about this idea of the camera, of photography, being a mediator.
Laub: For my family work, I can say that the camera worked more as a mediator, because the way I approach all of my work, whether I'm commissioned to do work or it's projects that are self-initiated, I go in with a very open mind. So the camera is really my way of exploring and learning. So I had to force myself to work in the same rigor as I would have done if my family was just a subject, with an open mind. I had to force myself to not be judgmental, to not be argumentative, to treat them the way you treat any subject with an open mind and an open heart. And that was hard. That was a challenge for me. When my mom is sitting in her living room with a sign that says women for Trump, how would I approach this? This is my mom who I love, and I just can't even fathom that this is the picture I'm making. No one could have ever predicted or told me that this is the picture I'd be making up my mother in 2016. So I had to check myself. It was really about being fair to my family the way I would try and be fair to any subject.
TiP: Could you talk a little bit about your use of lighting and the role of light in your photos?
Laub: I'm not a major tech nerd at all. Lighting is obviously important. Natural light and ambient light is where I start. The flash, there's always just one flash. I try to make it soft, because I don't like when a flash overpowers, and you become too aware of the flash. But I like a flash enough so you can actually read the details. Because it’s really about highlighting the details for me. Everything is about the details.
TiP: How does your presence as a photographer affect your interactions with your family?
Laub: Oh, they're so annoyed by me with the camera, but I think it's funny– when I started doing video, I think video annoys them more than still photos now. They’ve gotten so used to me with a camera in their face. But now when I simultaneously film, I think they're more annoyed by the filming than they are the still photos. They've gotten used to the still photos.
TiP: How do they respond to your still photos?
Laub: It's a mixed bag. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't say that I'm uncomfortable with someone taking my picture. So I know how uncomfortable it is to have your picture taken. So I am so grateful to them, that they're so trusting of me and allow me to just take whatever photos I want. And they put their foot down many times and say, “Okay, enough, enough. You can't photograph this. You can't film this.” So, I'm respectful of their boundaries as well.
TiP: You talk on your website about family albums. Talk a little bit about the relationship of your work to family albums. What does that mean to you? How do you see them as being in some sense, similar, but also different?
Laub: I'm obsessed with family albums. My favorite thing to do is look through people's family albums. I think it's just that I love vernacular photography. I love family photography. And I guess, for me, I'm almost recreating my family album, in a way. For the cover photo of my book, we put a border around it, so it had the same visual language. In the end papers, I used all of my family photography, designed like a family album. The plates of my photographs have a different language, obviously. Vernacular photography is very important for me, and I get great inspiration from family photographs.
TiP: Talk about that inspiration, talk about how vernacular photographs influenced you.
Laub: I think it's amazing to see how people pose themselves. It just tells so much about someone's life. There's a self-consciousness, but also a spontaneity, in these pictures, that I just love. It's the story of a person's life. I'm imagining what the story is and what the relationships are between the people. They're markers of time and markers of life. I could just look at old family photos forever... and be happy.
TiP: How do these photographs of family members compare to other photographic subjects for you? Do you feel like you have a similar approach? Different approach?
Laub: I think I have a very similar approach in the process. I'm never a fly on the wall. I'm both a part of the scene, and yet documenting the scene. In my other projects, though, clearly I'm not part of that story, but very much interactive with the people I'm photographing.
TiP: And what's the nature of that interaction? How do you characterize that, or is it spontaneous?
Laub: I think that's why I use so much text in my work, because there's so much that is conveyed through conversation, and in interviews, an exchange with the person. So in every one of my projects, the text is just as important as the photograph. And that's probably why it was such a natural transition to film, because it's so much about the environment... what the person has to say, and the voice. For me what happens in between frames is just as important as what's happening in the frame.
Laub: Oh, they're so annoyed by me with the camera, but I think it's funny– when I started doing video, I think video annoys them more than still photos now. They’ve gotten so used to me with a camera in their face. But now when I simultaneously film, I think they're more annoyed by the filming than they are the still photos. They've gotten used to the still photos.
TiP: How do they respond to your still photos?
Laub: It's a mixed bag. I would be a hypocrite if I didn't say that I'm uncomfortable with someone taking my picture. So I know how uncomfortable it is to have your picture taken. So I am so grateful to them, that they're so trusting of me and allow me to just take whatever photos I want. And they put their foot down many times and say, “Okay, enough, enough. You can't photograph this. You can't film this.” So, I'm respectful of their boundaries as well.
TiP: You talk on your website about family albums. Talk a little bit about the relationship of your work to family albums. What does that mean to you? How do you see them as being in some sense, similar, but also different?
Laub: I'm obsessed with family albums. My favorite thing to do is look through people's family albums. I think it's just that I love vernacular photography. I love family photography. And I guess, for me, I'm almost recreating my family album, in a way. For the cover photo of my book, we put a border around it, so it had the same visual language. In the end papers, I used all of my family photography, designed like a family album. The plates of my photographs have a different language, obviously. Vernacular photography is very important for me, and I get great inspiration from family photographs.
TiP: Talk about that inspiration, talk about how vernacular photographs influenced you.
Laub: I think it's amazing to see how people pose themselves. It just tells so much about someone's life. There's a self-consciousness, but also a spontaneity, in these pictures, that I just love. It's the story of a person's life. I'm imagining what the story is and what the relationships are between the people. They're markers of time and markers of life. I could just look at old family photos forever... and be happy.
TiP: How do these photographs of family members compare to other photographic subjects for you? Do you feel like you have a similar approach? Different approach?
Laub: I think I have a very similar approach in the process. I'm never a fly on the wall. I'm both a part of the scene, and yet documenting the scene. In my other projects, though, clearly I'm not part of that story, but very much interactive with the people I'm photographing.
TiP: And what's the nature of that interaction? How do you characterize that, or is it spontaneous?
Laub: I think that's why I use so much text in my work, because there's so much that is conveyed through conversation, and in interviews, an exchange with the person. So in every one of my projects, the text is just as important as the photograph. And that's probably why it was such a natural transition to film, because it's so much about the environment... what the person has to say, and the voice. For me what happens in between frames is just as important as what's happening in the frame.
TiP: Talk a little bit more about how you select the text that goes with the image, and the nature of text.
Laub: The portrait that I land on, that I end up choosing...that's the portrait. That is the picture that expresses what I see as the truth of that person. Right? So, it's not the frame next to it. It's not the frame to the other side of it. It's that particular frame. There's anywhere from 40 to 150 frames to get to where I feel every gesture, all the elements come together for the picture to work. So I do the same with the text. You get it down to the essence of what the truth is that that person is saying. And, of course, that's subjective. That's me imposing what I think, so it's all subjective, but I try to be as authentic to what I think is true. Again, it's my truth; it's how I see things. It's how I'm interpreting what someone is telling me.
TiP: Could you talk a little about the ethics of photography? We live in a world with more than a trillion photographs made every year, where we're flooded with misinformation. There are so many mechanisms for distributing things that are every shade of accurate and inaccurate. What do you think of the ethical responsibilities of photographers in today's world?
Laub: The ethics of photography, and the responsibility of the storyteller, and the photographer is something I take very, very, very seriously. It's something that I think about in the whole process. In the approach, to the actual picture making, to the editing, and to the presenting. How you present your work is also really important. The context in which it's presented, one photo, one context could say one thing, and another context could say something else. It's very important to constantly think about the impact that your photographs can have on other people...and it's your responsibility as an image-maker, as a storyteller, to constantly question yourself, and the ethics of the work that you're putting out into the world.
TiP: Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Laub: I think it's also a struggle, because I've had to make, and I know a lot of people have, I've had to make a lot of sacrifices in giving up on showing some of what I think are my strongest images. I've had to sacrifice them because someone asked me not to show them. Or I thought it could, perhaps, be disrespectful to someone in the photograph. There has been a lot of heartbreak, for me, artistically, because I chose ethics over the art.
Laub: The portrait that I land on, that I end up choosing...that's the portrait. That is the picture that expresses what I see as the truth of that person. Right? So, it's not the frame next to it. It's not the frame to the other side of it. It's that particular frame. There's anywhere from 40 to 150 frames to get to where I feel every gesture, all the elements come together for the picture to work. So I do the same with the text. You get it down to the essence of what the truth is that that person is saying. And, of course, that's subjective. That's me imposing what I think, so it's all subjective, but I try to be as authentic to what I think is true. Again, it's my truth; it's how I see things. It's how I'm interpreting what someone is telling me.
TiP: Could you talk a little about the ethics of photography? We live in a world with more than a trillion photographs made every year, where we're flooded with misinformation. There are so many mechanisms for distributing things that are every shade of accurate and inaccurate. What do you think of the ethical responsibilities of photographers in today's world?
Laub: The ethics of photography, and the responsibility of the storyteller, and the photographer is something I take very, very, very seriously. It's something that I think about in the whole process. In the approach, to the actual picture making, to the editing, and to the presenting. How you present your work is also really important. The context in which it's presented, one photo, one context could say one thing, and another context could say something else. It's very important to constantly think about the impact that your photographs can have on other people...and it's your responsibility as an image-maker, as a storyteller, to constantly question yourself, and the ethics of the work that you're putting out into the world.
TiP: Do you have anything else you'd like to add?
Laub: I think it's also a struggle, because I've had to make, and I know a lot of people have, I've had to make a lot of sacrifices in giving up on showing some of what I think are my strongest images. I've had to sacrifice them because someone asked me not to show them. Or I thought it could, perhaps, be disrespectful to someone in the photograph. There has been a lot of heartbreak, for me, artistically, because I chose ethics over the art.