There is always a family portrait in every house, an image that shows those that have time to watch it all the members of the family together, or at least, the members of the familiar nucleus: mother, father and child(ren), perhaps grandma and/or grandpa, maybe an aunt, an uncle...
Some hundred of years ago family photos were events that deserved the time for a special party, a celebration. The camera was those days a pretty singular machine, and it costed a lot for a family to have one. It is not just to afford the camera, you have to have the facilities to develop the films, a lab that has all what is necessary, different products, special light (love have started in photo labs...)... Means money, was not worth just for family fun and the families gathered their members to the ritual of taking away from the time an image that will last forever. It was cheaper to invite a photographer to the party, which was certainly done, and sometimes year after year, the same ‘light magician’.
Photographies and family name compose the cultural history from every basic human group. ‘The Pérez’s’ can prove that no one else is part of that group by exposing their images to the view. ‘The Stein’s’ like family crests because they point out that a place is been inhabited by some sort of clan that has a name writen on bright metal.
But, back to the photos, images also show, in a certain way, the family values from the past. The way people lived hundred years ago (or even today) is to find, if you seek with attention, on the images that unexpectedly become, each one of them, an historic document.
