Nothing is more absolute and relative, changeable, universal and equally particular as the topic of family. Family has to do with genetics, the social, law, security, protection and abuse; happiness and unhappiness.
Never before has it been everything and its opposite, and nothing is more capable of warming tempers, igniting controversy, uniting and dividing than the meaning to be given to the term family. Solid, yet so delicate. There, where the word stops or expands out of all proportion, photography, which from its inception so much was linked to this very theme, can intervene. Its spread among the middle-class social classes accompanied the desire for a private and personal account of the events that marked their milestones: portraits of ancestors, births, weddings, anniversaries, all condensed into those volumes that in the first decades of the last century furnished the good living room. Family albums. We asked one of the most important living photographers, who has spanned almost a century, to create one that is personal and public, historical and contemporary, serious and ironic, and to dedicate it in an absolute premiere at Mudec Photo. This is the genesis of the exhibition, Elliott Erwitt. Family. Elliott Erwitt, agreed and personally selected with Biba Giacchetti, curator of the exhibition, the images that he felt would illustrate some of the facets of this inexpressible and totalizing concept. Elliott, who has traversed world history, gives us instants of the lives of the powerful of the earth, such as Jackie at JFK’s funeral, alongside very private scenes, such as the famous photo of the newborn child on the bed, who is then Ellen, his firstborn daughter. The collection selected for Mudec Photo alternates between ironic images and social cutaways, nude weddings, extended families, or very unique, metaphors and open endings such as the Bratsk wedding photograph. As always, Elliott Erwitt tells us about the great events that made history and the small incidents of everyday life, reminds us that we can be the family we choose, the plastered, rigid American family posing on the sofa in the 1960s, or the family that breaks the barrier of loneliness by electing a favorite animal as a member. Different families, in which to recognize oneself, or from which to distance oneself with a smile. A universal theme, which concerns humanity, interpreted by Elliott Erwitt with his unique style, powerful and light, romantic or gently ironic, a figure that has made this author one of the most beloved and followed photographers of all time.
