What is a family portrait? What are some famous family portraits? How would you take a family portrait now?
Portraits of family members were first produced by painters back then. Family portraits were considered to be a statement of power and profession. Paintings were expensive and time consuming to produce, thus it was limited to certain groups of people in the society like the heads of state, military leaders, royalty or other members of the ruling class.
In most family portraits, the people in it looked rather solemn and I am assuming that that became the ideal pose for portraits. But as time went by, this culture of painting slowly started to vanish, and it was replaced by photographs. Even in the early photographs, the people did not show much emotions and by looking at the picture above, I realize that they actually choose certain outfits that represent who they are or rather what class they belong to.
Nowadays as both technology and mind-sets of people has changed drastically over the years, the type of photographs taken have also changed. For example, the picture above shows the US president with his family. This is a very different type of family portrait as it is taken outdoors and the subjects are seen smiling. And we are also capable of instantly capturing moments using our mobile phones as contrary to the olden days where people had to engage someone to come over to take a picture.
Sources: http://dostalproject.weebly.com/meaning-of-family-photos.html
http://art.ekstrax.com/2013/04/10-famous-family-portraits-and-paintings-over-time.html