Family

Family is not like the happy households of the 1950's; where kids play catch with dad, and mom cooks meatloaf for supper time, while sister sally plays with her dolls and skip chases his tail around the single-lot yard in the summer sun. Family is far more elaborate, and far more grueling, and far more intense than any story book can show. The lives of 5 people, all intertwined but still separate, commingle and try to make their situation work. Togetherness is the fabric of a family, to be apart is to tear it apart thread by thread. Every family is different, but I know for a fact you cannot go into the richest of neighborhoods and see that every one of them is perfect. I think it would be ignorant to say that any family is perfect, or at least perfect in the same way as you would read from a book, or see on T.V., or see on the cover of a home and garden magazine. I know my family isn't like that, no way in hell could my family be considered "normal" by any account. But it you wouldn't know that by looking at us, you would only assume that we are a "normal" family and you would take it for face value and move on. Game over. But its the little things, and maybe the bigger ones too, the things that we keep in our own circle, the things we don't want the public to know about us, and the things that we would possible be ashamed of others finding out about.

This is why I love the series Ray's a Laugh by Richard Billingham.

The series shows a look into a real household, where nothing seems like the typical "pretty" or "normal" lifestyle. The family is that of the photographer Richard, and shows his Obese mother Liz, and his alcoholic father Ray, and the life they live.

I find this one of the more real and beautiful collections I have seen, and I feel like we can all connect to it somehow. The people may seem dirty, unhealthy, negligent, maybe even unworthy of this earth to some, but they have more love in them than many families I have seen myself - that is easily seen on their faces, and in their eyes. Even though it may be a struggle, and that struggle is apparent, these images capture what is real, and really make me question what it truly means to be a family.

My own father often throws our cat.