Anna Ogier-Bloomer
Family Pictures | My work centers around the notion of voyeurism within American culture and contemporary family histories seen through the lives of my own family. By exposing our private, unsightly, and painful moments to the viewer, I allow passage into our experiences as a way to connect to the viewer’s own family life. The American obsession with an idealized view of family evokes fascination with the private and painful dysfunctions which make that ideal unattainable.
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, a few minutes’ drive from the northern border of Kentucky. There is no single ordinary American domestic life, and my own family is complicated—a sometimes toxic mix of staunch liberals and conservatives, working-class and upper-middle class. My father, the doctor, never quite mixed with my mother’s working-class family. My mother, the matriarch holding the family together, faced a shattering betrayal later in life that revealed a marriage built on lies. My sister struggles as the youngest child to find her way, her true self. My grandfather carries a gun on his body at all times, reveling in his right to concealed carry.
These images do not speak for a universal family; they are an example of the many ways the family unit is defined. My work plays into our cultural need to uncover others‘ private lives. Going beyond the basic voyeuristic nature of photography, these images reveal the stories we all keep behind drawn curtains and closed doors. By accompanying my images with text, I bring the audience closer to a personal story. In following my subjects as I have for years, and will for years to come, I am able to create an ongoing narrative that combines the reality of my family’s struggles and existence with my own perception of that reality. www.annaogierbloomer.com
