During the All Saints’ holidays, my daughter Junior (a nickname I have liked since episode 2 of this column), spent a lot of time looking at our photo albums, including the last one, the one from the summer holidays. In our photos, Junior is everywhere. With her are grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts and even friends. And, above all, Junior poses with me, his dad. “It sounds like you had a great vacation with your daughter.”his mother, my wife, jokes.
Why are mothers largely absent from family photographs? Even in fiction, they seem to fade away in front of their spouse and children. Marge Simpson is no exception. “Look at our vacation photos”he says to Homer in episode 13 of season 16. In the photos, Homer is omnipresent, but no sign of Marge!
The answer is very simple: “Every day it is the women who take the photos”, says sociologist Irène Jonas, author of a study on family photography published in 2010. Regular readers of this irregular column will have understood that my wife J. and I are sensitive to feminism. But, for the photos, we hadn’t even considered that patriarchy could creep in between us. Simply because J. and I are trained photographers. She continued down this path, while the vicissitudes of my professional career led me to offer this story to your sagacity.
Of a confusing banality
We both love photography and, until Junior was born, I was the one who carried the camera when we went on trips. Without us realizing it, the roles have been reversed. A reality of disconcerting banality.
In 2022, blogger Laura Vallet attempted to include her appearances in the family album. “From 450 [images]I’m in 10% of the photos, half [de celles-ci] “They are selfies and there is only one photo where I am without my children”had noticed in X. “Mothers: shall we take a photo of them? »she then asked, always oncollecting numerous testimonies similar to yours. This year, at the beginning of August, it is Louise Chabat, actress, “therapist and coach” according to his Instagram bio, which exclaimed in a post: “To all the dads, take a photo with our children! »
One of the causes of this unequal distribution of roles can be found in the history of photography itself, in its technological developments and its uses. “Until the early 70s, men also took family photos”specifies Irène Jonas. The sociologist adds that it was the arrival of automatic cameras, such as Kodak’s Instamatic, that helped put women behind the lens. The target market for the American manufacturer’s range is clearly mothers. A Kodak advertisement from the 1960s leaves little doubt about the target audience: we see a mother taking advantage of her husband’s nap to steal his camera and capture the afternoon of games she shares with her son.
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