deer family
(2013)
Photographic series. C-type prints of analog slides, various formats.
Photographic album containing 15 c-type prints of analog slides, 6cm x 9cm.
Installation view: Scope Gallery, Hanover.
Story about a photograph
"The photos here allude to an age when we still collected and edited our photographs ready for the family album. A time when we shared these images and the stories they encouraged with our loved ones, family and close friends. Photos of events we had been told worthy of documenting. Events such as birthdays, holidays, and 1st days…in short happy days selected for our perusal later in life.
The images are of an expected event often seen in this situation, a scene of Christmas. In family albums around the western world we see similar scenes. Tinsel draped, candles burning, cards hung, and presents opened. All among happy smiling faces of the extended family. The scene is a joyous one. The food has been eaten, jokes have been shared, crackers have been pulled and we are now at the end of the day. The time when presents are opened. Each person carefully studying the other, in the hope they will like their present…We are not concerned with the magenta cast or the lack of focus in the image – we barely notice this as we are concentrating on the clues, the expressions, the gestures, the clothes give us about the emotional state of the time we had. The photos are taken not only as a memory of the event but also as a way of establishing a family narrative, a future nostalgia. We visit and re-visit these intimate images becoming obsessed at times with our ability to linger lovingly over a face, a gesture, a look within the photo.
In her 2001 book ‘Suspended Conversations. In 'The Afterlife of Memory in Photo Albums’ Martha Langford observes that the album is a place of performance both for those being photographed and those viewing the album; telling us not to trust such images any more, but to understand them as genres that follow a code so closely knit it is impossible to view the veracity of family life through them. Reminding us that the pose, the selection and the writing are all part of the plot to show a happy family life, resulting in a wide gap between photographs and lived experience.
And what of the deer? These elegant beasts caught in the early morning light and so closely associated with Christmas itself, what are they doing here?
In John Berger’s essay ‘Why look at animals?’ he argues that as a result of Capitalism’s reorganization of society we are now separated from our close connection to undomesticated animals. We no longer live among the animals that have been driven from our society into the shadows of the Zoo, TV and photographs. The ancient gaze between animal and human no longer exists. How would it feel to be caught in the animal gaze? It’s possible we feel stripped bare, exposed as unreal and fake in comparison to them. Through this animal from the deer, are the characters in Katrin Ribbe’s work exposed as the friends and neighbours they are and not the family they pretend to be? And is it possible that the culture of Christmas seen as the ultimate manifestation of capitalism, in comparison to our ancient past.
It is possible that Katrin has re-established this gaze between human and animal in this work. And that the presence of the deer has helped us to acknowledge that the family images have been meticulously constructed, that Katrin has used her knowledge of photography and theatre and her sense of humour to carefully mimic family images to make such a comment on our contemporary society."
Text: Beverly Carruthers, Senior Lecturer, Artist and Curator, London.
