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Family Matters. By Gillian Laub.
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Photographs by Gillian Laub
Aperture, New York, NY, 2021. 196 pp., 9½x10¾".
If you want to portray the American Dream in just one picture, you could do worse than the cover photo of Gillian Laub’s new monograph Family Matters. It shows Laub’s late grandfather Irving Yasgur, engaged with a large cheeseburger and fries. It’s his 85th birthday in 2003 and he’s enjoying the fruits of a long self-made journey into wealthy retirement. Surrounded by family on a beach chair in Florida, he pauses in his Speedo to soak up the moment, along with a bit of burger juice. He gazes back at Laub’s camera without a trace of self-consciousness.
Yasgur was the late patriarch of a sprawling family, the Laubs/Yasgurs (of Woodstock fame). Fortunately for posterity, and also for fine art photo buffs, his descendants include an excellent photographer. Gillian Laub was on the scene at most family gatherings and events, compiling a steady record. This was done somewhat out of shutterbug habit, but also with the vague idea that they might evolve into a future project. As with many family histories, it took some time for Laub’s to reach fruition. The pictures were finally catalyzed into book form by the divisive shock of Trump’s 2016 victory. Now published by Aperture in conjunction with a show at ICP, the long wait was worth it.
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Family Matters is sharp, entertaining, and quite relevant to contemporary politics. At base level, Family Matters is a traditional picture album, with Laub’s photographs forming the core. They chart a roughly chronological course from 1999 to the present, one or two photos per spread. Endpapers pulled from old scrapbooks reference the power of pictures as living history. But in this case, the photographs are supplemented with material not normally found in old picture albums. Laub’s written anecdotes use the photographs to recount related memories, relationships, and events. She’s a talented writer, and the captions are brilliant on their own. Even better, they coalesce into a page-turning drama. Beginning in the introduction — “Life unfolded to reveal chasms I didn’t expect.”— Laub drops hints of turmoil to come. When it does, all hell breaks loose. But for much of the book, we aren’t exactly sure what the future holds. The reader’s anticipation creates a narrative arc more typical of a three-act play than an artist’s monograph.
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I’ll address the final act in a moment, but let’s set that aside for now to focus on the photos, which are extremely well crafted. Laub studied at ICP. She’s worked, taught, and published widely over a twenty-year period. A working pro, in other words. When she aims the lens at family, her domestic dioramas might fit a gallery wall as easily as an old photo album. That’s both good and bad. These photos can be appreciated as complex and interesting images, even if you know nothing about Laub’s family. But they have a certain performative magazine quality too, more objective than intimate.
A photo early in the book — grandparents exiting a limo in furs — hints at their social milieu and the unconscious privilege which later spills into family enmity. Another photo of grandpa and mom embracing signifies warm family dynamics, while a glaring shot of her wedding planner carries a more ominous tone. All are photos for which Laub had singular access. They might be expected from any loud sprawling family with a photographer in the clan. She may have chosen a less traditional path, but it’s paid off in these treasured moments.
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The family gathers regularly, celebrating, eating, talking, etc. Everything is fine for several years until 2016, when family dynamics plunge into chaos with the rise of —who else? — Donald Trump. The great disrupter who seeded division throughout the nation. Turns out the Laub family was not immune. Gillian Laub is an educated artist living in a city and, perhaps not surprisingly, a woke liberal. Her parents are suburban gentry, and prone to Trump’s charms. To Laub’s shock they transform overnight into ardent Trump supporters. Who would have guessed? Certainly not Laub. Her photographs of them with various MAGA aprons, hats, and posters feel alarmed and spectacular, as if Laub can’t quite grasp what she’s seeing.
Tensions linger for several years through the election of 2016, and right up to the present. Sides are taken, and heated words exchanged, along with stern looks. An angry text-stream excerpted in the book provides a microcosm of similar battles playing out in living rooms across the country. The Laubs are not untypical, and this book might be considered a case study of our fraught political climate. In the end they persevere and reaffirm family bonds—they have no choice—and Family Matters ends on a Panglossian note, vaguely unsettling considering that Trumpism is still alive and well.
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Family Matters joins the pantheon of family photo classics, along with well-loved monographs by Larry Sultan, Sally Mann, and Richard Billingham, to name just a few. What makes this book especially delightful is that it also captures the post-truth zeitgeist of competing worldviews. If the delight of photography is its ambiguity, Trump might provide the perfect control sample. How can rational people view the same basic facts and come away with such different understandings? How can one person’s settled election result be another person’s international conspiracy? It’s a lesson that photographers constantly wrestle with. Ultimately the meanings of both pictures and politicians are in the eye of the beholder. Laub does an admirable job as an objective observer, attempting to record people and events with negligible bias. But her book will still contain vastly different meanings depending on a reader’s political views. This is a portrait of the American Dream. Whether that dream is threatened or healthy is open to debate.
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