I’m not in the picture, but it’s a picture of my family.
Most of our family portraits these days are around a dining table of sorts… usually after lunch or dinner. They also happen to have less than the full family in them. Sometimes some of my cousins aren’t present, other times a whole family is missing.
Our family portraits these days are meant to be a celebration of the extended family getting together. Surprisingly, it’s not easy getting the family together, even for a simple dinner. Especially not with the young un’s in their 20s, running around, going out with friends instead of their family.
I’ll be honest, I get really mad when my cousins don’t turn up for family dinners… especially because of something dumb like “went out with friends”. Who knows how much longer our grandmother has? I don’t think anyone has fully comprehended loss.
My grandparents’ home has a bunch of portraits hung up on the wall. Similar to the ancestral pictures in the Paranakan homes, but instead the photos are photos of my aunts and uncles in their graduation gowns. Now I’m just waiting for proper portraits of my cousins to be put up on the wall.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/01/painted-family-portraits_n_1929213.html
The above picture is Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe de la Famille Soler, 1903 (oil on canvas), painted by Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973).
I like this painting as it’s interesting how it uses bright colours, depicting a family at an apparent picnic, posing for a picture. You can sense the happiness in the family, even if they aren’t smiling widely. Also, considering this is actually a painting by Picasso, it isn’t in his “signature” style, since it was made before he started experimenting with cubism. This is a painting that was commissioned by the family portrayed as payment for clothing.
I think it’s interesting how it would appear that the key elements of what family portraits are remain mostly the same from the past until today. They are essentially a form of note-taking, a way that people make their mark in the world… a sort of “proof” to say “I was here, I did this, don’t forget me”. At the core of everything, they are made so that we can look back and remember and feel nostalgic.
Or, like I said, maybe it’s just a form of “proof”. After all, the existence of photographs and paintings of families are the only way we even know that they ever existed today. Likewise, people in the future will probably stalk our facebooks and instagrams and make judgements about who we were based of our photos.