The Spirit of Family

I couldn't care less about the former profession, one-time aspirations, or politics of the person who edited this lovely book. As I see it, this collection of photos has virtually nothing to do with politics of any sort and has everything to do with the celebration of America's families. Inside this wonderful 225-pages worth of images are Americans of all ages, races, locations and surely political views. The one thing that unites the subjects of these color and black and white, modern and occasionally vintage photos is the fact that they are Americans and part of a family. There are heartwarming snapshots of small children, and formal portraits of adult family members, too. There are candid shots of young people playing, and families being together at work, church and around the dinner table. There are so many images of obvious love that I can't see how anyone would find this controversial. I think this work should appeal to people from coast to coast and stand as a festival of family togetherness.

I despise both the Republican and Democratic party, and I didn't vote for Al Gore in the last presidential electoral farce, but I must admit I was taken aback by the collection of photos he and his wife, Tipper, assembled in this book. Their authorship is little misleading, however, for they're only editors--not photographers--pulling together--with the help of photographers--a vast array of works by numerous skilled and apparently hardworking camera artists and workers. Few photo books show the diversity of the human project as this one. The Gores dare to include images a gay couple, of an interracial relationship, of the everyday poverty lived throughout the front and backyards of this country--of the old and the young, the sick and the afflicted, the violent and the peace makers, the believers and the doubters, the workers and their children, the faces and bodies of a cultural mosaic that makes up the republic. The images are rugged, urbane, rural and rustic in tone. They provide a voyeuristic look into the homes of people we can't see on t.v. or People magazine. Some of them are so personal that we wonder what they mean, but others only mirror the human condition--the living and loving, the believing and doubting, the holding ourselves together despite our frayed existence.These are not wholesome, American pie photos. They break the media codes of slick Hollywood images or stereotypes of family. Seen together, the collection gives off a truer meaning what is family, of how, as the Gores contend, "families are changing." So for me, no one particular photo stands out, even though the individual works of Sylvia Plachy, Nicholas Nixon, Lauren Greenfield, Laura Staus, Eli Reed, and Arlene Gottfried, convey a particular style and depth.I also particularly like the point the editors make in their introduction, that "America's finest photographers have long believed that the greatest subject for their craft is not wars or the dramatic events of history, but the way people interact with one another--how they touch; how they hold their children in their arms; how they get through the day with all the stress, strains, and joys that life hands them; how one generation relates to the next." This is in part what I call the human project. And what better way to capture it than with photography. ...

This is a very moving book. Who would think a picture book could be so telling. The Gores should be congratulated for documenting families is such a creative, insightful way. This book is a keeper!

It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this book proves it. The Gores have said they went through fifteen thousand photographs before choosing the ones they've included, and they've come up with some real winners. One of the cleverest, on P.62, shows a baby clutching a bottle against her face while a business-suited man sits on a nearby bed, clutching a cell phone in almost the same position. For emotional impact, I've seldom seen a photograph comparable to one by Alex Webb on P. 182, which shows a mother tending to her baby on a rooftop. In the background is the lower Manhattan skyline,almost blocked out by the smoke and ash of September 11th. Although the book is expensive, this picture and others make it well worth the price.

Coming from an amatuer photographer and former journalist, I was not expecting much. However, Tipper Gore did not take the pictures, and instead she and her husband selected some photographs to show different families of all walks of life in different stages of existence. Some of the pictures you will have seen before, but most were new to me. It is a good addition to your living room table.