What is NOT there in the private family album: counter-narratives of motherhood

Family albums are usually created according to a certain logic: photographs arranged in chronological order, depicting significant events in the family’s life, often constructing a somewhat idealised image (smiling, celebrating, the whole family together, etc.). In this talk, the artist, a practitioner of analogue photography and mother of four children, analyses her own family's photographic albums using the strategy of "reading against the grain". She draws attention to what is missing or scarce in the albums. For example, there are no albums in physical form, as the majority of the photographs are stored on a computer. The mother herself is absent or rarely photographed, there are hardly any painful moments (despair, injuries, etc.), private, domestic spaces dominate, and the public environment is rarely seen in the frame. Looking at the photo album in this manner allows us to highlight the alternative narratives of motherhood that lie at the margins of dominant family narratives. Jelena Šalaj draws on the critical tradition of photographic analysis associated with A.Kuhn, M.Hirsch, M.Langford and other artists who have explored the intersection of private and public stories.

Jelena Šalaj holds a PhD in psychology and is a researcher, lecturer, and writer of texts. Her academic interests include visual studies, qualitative research methods, and photographic theory and history. She is interested in and works with analogue photography and is the creator of the website www.vienok.lt. In 2020, she started a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vilnius University Institute of International Relations and Political Science, where she is researching analogue photography from the perspective of feminist visual culture.