Looking for old family photographs and albums (for a PhD thesis)

[Sophie DC]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here! I’m Sophie, history teacher and PhD candidate in France. I’m doing research on family photographs made by professional photographers or amateurs: my work focuses on the representation of children, the making of boyhood and girlhood on these pictures and I’m trying to draw a comparison between France and England (1840’s-1930’s).

 

I’m writing here because you may help me… I’m currently looking for family photographs and albums. I’ve already found lots of pictures in the collections of the National Portrait Gallery or the Museum of Childhood in London but I think it would be quite interesting if I could also based my work on private archives: if any of you have old family pictures (or know someone who collects this kind of pictures) and want to share your own family’s history with me, please contact me (I’ll come several times to Great Britain in the coming months)! Besides the technical and esthetical aspects of the pictures, I think it is quite interesting and necessary to know a few elements of the life of the children who are represented on these photographs.

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

Sophie

[Tony Rackstraw]

hello - I have an album which previously belong to the Image family, it includes photographs of their children - you can see the whole album on my website here: http://earlyphotographers.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/fanny-images-album...

[Angela Kelly]

I work with family album images of my own by integrating them into my photographic art work.  See AngelaKellyPhoto.com

I discuss the work in the journal, 'Photographies,' Volume 6 Issue 1. 2012 in the essay, Catharsis: Images of Post Conflict Belfast. The Journal, Photographies addresses the family photograph in other volumes too which may be of interest. 

Artists who work with family albums  archives include Eric Kassel, ( Brussels) Barbara Levine, ( US) Thomas Sauvin ( China) 

and many more.