The Milwaukee Art Museum presents "Family Pictures"

September 14, 2018–January 20, 2019

Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts

Family Pictures explores the ways in which black photographers and artists have portrayed a range of familial relationships, from blood relatives to close-knit neighborhoods to queer communities.

Beginning with Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes’s groundbreaking 1955 book The Sweet Flypaper of Life, the exhibition gathers photographic series, installations, and videos by an intergenerational group of artists, including John Edmonds, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lyle Ashton Harris, Deana Lawson, Lorraine O’Grady, Gordon Parks, Sondra Perry, Ming Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems. Their images of family life often maneuver between intimate, everyday stories and broader political realities, between the universal human condition and the particular histories of race in the United States. As Lawson says of her work, “Every day is political, the everyday is personal.”

A touchstone for several of the artists in the exhibition is the work of Roy DeCarava (American, 1919-2009). Coming of age in Harlem during the 1940s, DeCarava reacted against what he saw as superficial stereotypes and “sociological” studies of his neighborhood by mostly white outsiders. With the aid of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, the artist set out to create expressive photographs of life in his community. He eventually published 140 pictures along with text by Langston Hughes in The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), a fictional family album that tenderly captures intimate moments of domestic life both in Harlem and seemingly everywhere.

Organized by the Columbus Museum of Art

Supporting events

Gallery Talks

Tues, 1:30 p.m.

Oct 9, Nov 27, and Jan 15

With Lisa Sutcliffe, Herzfeld Curator of Photography and Media Arts

Kahlil Joseph: Black Mary

Sept 14, 2018–Jan 20, 2019

The contemporary American filmmaker Kahlil Joseph looked to the haunting black-and-white photography of Roy DeCarava to create his film Black Mary (2017), which is presented in conjunction with Family Pictures.

Local Luminaries

Thurs, Nov 29, 6 p.m.

Visit the exhibition with distinguished guests from the Milwaukee community, including Judge Joe Donald and Cecelia Gore, executive director of the Brewers Community Foundation, as they offer new perspectives for understanding the works on view.