Book Description

This literary counterpart to Charles Musser and Maria Threese Serana's documentary Our Family Album includes brief essays by those involved in its production as well as an annotated script with selected images from the film. The book, like the documentary, reflects on the construction, nature and meaning of family photography. In an era of globalization, the filmmakers move back and forth between two countries whose relationship was forged by war and a half century of colonization - the Philippines and the United States. How they and their son negotiate their lives between these two cultures is some of the work done by and through the family album. This intimate portrait moves outward to engage scholars, archivists, and fellow filmmakers who have different perspectives and even conflicting views on the nature of family photography and how they deploy it in their personal and professional lives. Commentators include Paolo Cherchi Usai, Lorna Johnson, Nick Deocampo, Vanessa Toulmin, Ashish Avikunthak and Thomas Elsaesser. Reimagines The Family of Man for the 21st Century.