Fotograf Magazine

Photographic media’s potential to democratise a gallery of family  portraits
did not remain unexploited for long, so today amateur family  photos have an irreplaceable role in private visual archives. Here the  success of photography develops from a joining of our natural desires to  record and store in our memories those close to us and from the  assumption of a privileged status of photographic portrayals vis- -vis  reality. By counting on the indexical character of photographic records  we seek the imprints of our family history on light-sensitive material and  we reaffirm ourselves that (in the words of Roland Barthes) “it was“.[ref]Barthes, Roland: Light Room / Světlá komora. 2nd edition, Prague: Agite/Fra, 2005.[/ref] In  the case of family archives, however, we are working with a markedly  idealised image of family history, which to detached viewers speaks more  to the conventions of its portrayal than to events of the past.