Doing family photography : the domestic, the public and the politics of sentiment

We cite from the COVER:
"Drawing on recent work in material culture studies, geography and anthropology, this book advocates approaching photographs as objects embedded in social practices, the doing of which produces specific social positions, relations and affects. A great deal is done with family photos: once snapped, they are deleted (sometimes), stored, put in albums, sent to relatives and friends, looked at, touched and put on display. This rich repertoire of doings allows a more complex understanding of family snaps. They produce specific visions of family life, yes, but they also enable a specific kind of mothering, complex economies of gifting and exchange among family and friends, and rich geographies of domestic and public spaces, all of which this book explores."
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Comment by Elizabeth Edwards:
"In shifting attention from what they show and what they mean, to what they do and how they are felt, this book completely changes the ways in which we might understand the humble family photograph In both private and public spaces. Theoretically, methodologically and empirically rich, it is set to become a standard work in the field of visual culture studies."
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CONTENTS:
1. Introduction --
2. How to look at family photographs : practices, objects, subjects, and places --
3. What is done with family snaps? --
4. What happens with this doing? : family, domestic space, and mothering --
5. The circulation of family photographs in the visual economy --
6. Family photos going public --
7. The politics of sentiment : picturing the missing and the dead in London, July 2005 --
8. Looking again, ethically, at family snaps in the mass media --
9. Conclusions : family photographs, domestic and public, and the contemporary visual economy
Biblbiography / Index