Éclats de famille

Ever since the earliest days of photography, the family has naturally found its way into the heart of the image. In front of the daguerreotype lens, people often had their photograph taken with their loved ones. As keen amateurs explored the camera’s possibilities, family members – sometimes against their will – became impromptu models. In 1888, when Kodak launched an easy-to-use camera, the intention was to enable everyone to become the guardian of their own memories, a discreet archivist of moments captured within the home, contributing to the creation of what would later be called ‘family archives’.

But how do we photograph our loved ones today? How do we view our own family, the bonds that unite us, or sometimes elude us? Does family photography continue to evoke only frozen moments of happiness, those moments that were so often chosen in past decades to fill the albums? Or, at a time when the very notion of family is being redefined, reinvented, sought elsewhere, does the image become a tool for questioning, deconstructing, revealing the cracks and silences? And where does that fragile, almost imperceptible line lie between personal memory and artistic expression? It is these questions that the exhibition ‘Éclats de familles’ seeks to answer, turning to contemporary photographers—those who shake certainties, who capture the fragments—of laughter, voices, tears, memory—of a diverse, shifting and sometimes reimagined family.

Eleven Belgian photographers, or those based in Belgium, take to the walls of the Photography Museum, all sharing the common thread of being part of the family they photograph, multiplying perspectives, kinships and forms of belonging.
For some, the act of photography is part of a daily life driven by the desire to freeze time, to capture their loved ones as the days go by and to build a visual memory. Chrystel Mukeba thus immortalises her children’s daily lives and photographs the tenderness of family bonds and the depth of simple gestures. Between the Italy of his origins and the Belgium of his present, Pascal Sgro creates a photographic journal where the ordinary becomes a trace and a fragment of sensory memory. Annabel Werbrouck explores the fragile balance of the encounter and mutual bonding between a child and their foster family, a home that gradually becomes a place of rebuilding. Over the years, the images of Matthieu Marre’s loved ones seek to reveal a sensitive inner world and spiritual depth rather than simply documenting reality.
For others, family is not at the centre of their artistic practice, but a particular event leads them to take a deeper interest in it. The end of life of his parents, who died nine months apart, prompts Philippe Herbet to turn his photographic gaze towards the intimate, where absence becomes palpable. Nick Hannes presents
a visual diary, created during lockdown, in which he captures simple, unexpected moments of joy at the heart of his family, during a time of great upheaval.
At times, photography becomes a means of exploring the fragilities that run through the family. With a unique perspective, Olivier Cornil captures the weight of the silences that underpin family ties. Anne De Gelas, for her part, explores the transformation of gestures and interactions as her son grows up.
Finally, the themes of archives and memory occupy a central place within family narratives. Simen K. Lambrecht revisits his grandmother’s memory through her letters and the rural landscapes of Flanders, blending memories, fiction and reality. For her part, Erell Hemmer explores the grief of losing a father and the necessity of defying oblivion, paying particular attention to the family garden, which has become a place of remembrance. As for Camille Carbonaro, she delves into her Mediterranean roots by exploring matrilineal transmission, gestures, traditions and family memories – a set of themes also found in the publications of her publishing house, Macaronibook. Accompanied by the contrasting perspectives of other photographers – through books or images from the collections of the Photography Museum – Éclats de familles weaves, in fragmented touches, a narrative around the act of photographing one’s own family, offering, without claiming to be exhaustive, the many facets of the family in contemporary Belgian photography. 

Curated by Adeline Rossion