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Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 2:29PM 
You may get tired of hearing this from me, but I bet you think it too when you look at family photos: what was the drive to go to the studio and have the portrait taken? Was it a "rite of life" condition: the social requirement to have the photo of the couple, or the family, to sit on the table or the piano in the parlor? It frequently looks like an exercise and not a pleasure.
There is a genre of family photos that makes you immediately realize that it was Mom whose idea it was to do this – she has the satisfied and proprietary expression while the husband and children look like this is their first foray into polite society. In this case I wonder. I don’t mean to make light of people’s motivations but I do wonder if the photographer might have tried a bit harder and taken another exposure or two; surely the photographer shares some responsibility for the outcome (but, to be fair, maybe he had a great shot and this is the one they chose; how many times have I seen that happen!).
Timebinder is a collection that represents culture and how people used the camera – it isn’t an art collection where the sole purpose is to gather the greatest art one can – so while there are some absolutely wonderful examples of camera art, there is also the other, warts and all.
It may be the designer in me, but I am not fond of wicker, or furniture made out of anything that makes more sense if it was meant to hold vegetables or fruit and not people; I feel the same way about chairs made of elk antlers, or tree limbs with the bark still on them; but that’s just me and it would be a dreary world indeed if everyone was like me – and photographs would be so much less interesting to look at and collect!
On the subject of chairs: photos of this period most often had the woman standing and the man seated, in other periods it was just the opposite. What, if anything, do you think it says about cultural attitudes and gender roles?
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