a Tornado Hit the House.” This is the title of the photograph that adorns the cover of Chris Verene’s “Famiy,” another art book from the fantastic Twin Palms Publishers. In these photographs, Verene documents the daily lives and trials of his extended family and neighbors over a quarter of a century. Kids with crossbows, babies on bare mattresses, and pregnant teens smoking in an empty kiddie pool populate these images, seemingly devoid of all self-consciousness. These are just people living their lives while trying to make ends meet in their economically depressed hometown of Galesburg, Ill.
These portraits are unapologetic and seem neither to condescend to their subjects nor to target them for criticism, instead attempting to present the reality of both their struggles and joys in its bare truth. While some of the photos may be mildly disturbing to our contemporary urban, and perhaps hypersensitive, sensibilities, as with the pregnant teenaged smoker, a certain dignity and honor in struggle perhaps emerges across the series as a whole, which presents the pathos of people doing their best to negotiate difficult circumstances and larger socio-economic forces than they can control. Aren’t we all?
Verene himself grew up in Galesburg, and then pursued his art education here in Georgia. He was a film studies and philosophy double major at Emory before receiving his MFA in studio art at Georgia State University. GMOA’s own collection includes his 1997 photograph “My Cousin Candi at her Wedding.”
Photos from the series are currently on exhibit at the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, running through November 1.
“My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousins”
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