Family Album Series

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Across a sequence of twelve black-and-white images, the hands of artist David A. Bailey flick through a family photograph album and press articles. A clock features in each image, symbolically tracing the passing of time. As the pages turn, the family album is replaced with positive images of family life from the Black African-American magazine, Ebony, followed by sensationalist headlines from the mainstream press – ‘Life for the Voodoo Witch’ and ‘The Brute’. 

The original black-and-white silver-based prints of Family Album Series are finely toned in an archival brown, expressing a feeling of time past. There is a cinematic quality, with a sequential narrative of tightly-framed images and interior close-ups. Bailey explains:

'I was trying to find a language in my practice at that time that raised questions around the complexity of Black representation and how it manifests itself differently in the popular press and popular culture.'

Family Album Series was produced in 1987 while Bailey was exploring elements of film noir, the archive, popular representation and the Black family in his practice.  At the time, he was part of D-MAX, a collective of six Black photographers, alongside Eddie Chambers, Ingrid Pollard, Dave Lewis, Zak Ove, Marc Boothe and Gilbert John. Exhibiting their work collectively, D-MAX sought to place Black photography within mainstream photographic practice.

Places

Subjects

photograph (as Subject), newspaper, hand, family, clock, time

Materials & Techniques

photograph (as object name), black & white photograph

Artist

David A Bailey (1961 - )

Title

Family Album Series

Date

1987

Medium

Sequence of twelve black and white photographs

Dimensions

height: 77 cm; width: 75.4 cm; depth: 3.2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist, November 2019

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 28 November 2019

GAC number

18831