These surprising family portraits will challenge your perspective on relationships

If there’s one universal photo genre – aside from selfies – it has to be the family photo. Almost everyone’s posed for one. Gather people in front of the camera. One, two, three, smile! But what shapes the family photo – is it the family or the photo itself that defines them?

This is the central theme of a new exhibit at the Hong Kong International Photo Festival, which examines how family photographs – from the simple to the outlandish – influence how we view our personal bonds.

Plain photos?

Consider a seemingly ordinary snapshot of grandparents with their grandchild in a cozy living room. The elderly man, relaxed in an armchair with a newspaper, his feet clad in woolen socks. Beside him, a child sits on the lap of a senior woman as they enjoy a book together.

Here’s the twist: The man in the photo is none other than China’s former president, Deng Xiaoping, often seen in grandiose propaganda portraits rather than intimate family moments. Yet, knowing his identity isn’t necessary to interpret the relationships in the photo, as family pictures convey a universal language we all recognize – whether we’re everyday people or Communist figures.

For many artists featured in this exhibition, the family photo’s straightforward nature makes it a perfect medium for creative experimentation and subversion.

Japanese photographer Masashi Asada found it challenging to choose which family events to photograph, so he began staging his father, mother, and brother in outlandish, whimsical settings.

In one frame, he and his family strike rock star poses, shredding guitars on stage at an underground concert. In another, they role-play as a fearsome yakuza clan, with every detail carefully curated.

He explains that his approach to family photography isn’t focused on the past, but rather an imagined future. It’s about embracing the constant evolution of who we are.

“All four of us could easily end up as yakuza,” he quips.

Hong Kong’s Lau Chi Chung takes a different approach to family storytelling. He combines carefully chosen vintage photos of unknown city residents – found through urban treasure hunts – with new images of his own.

The result is a surreal tapestry of connections between unrelated people, from different times and places, forming a dreamlike narrative.

“The relationships in my work may be fictional,” Lau states. “But I believe the emotions they evoke are very real.”

Mapping connections

As the exhibition suggests, family photos are more than just neutral depictions of people. We’re drawn to them because they serve as surrogates for our memories and blueprints of our relationships. They act as a statement: These four corners define a family.

The curators of the exhibit aimed to challenge this concept, which is why many of the pieces take a purposeful twist on traditional family portraiture.

“We wanted to maintain an open perspective — does ‘family’ have to mean just a mother, father, children, and grandparents?” asks co-curator Bobby Sham in an interview with Dinogo.

One series by Frankie Chan captures human families from a pet’s perspective. Photographer-turned-monk Chang Lin focuses on leaves, flowers, and trees, suggesting that nature itself reveals some of the most authentic family bonds.

Joe Lau documents the items found in single-person households in Hong Kong – perhaps a solitary saucer, an ashtray, and a beer bottle can also represent a kind of family.

Life’s stages

Family photos do more than just reflect relationships; they can also forge them. In one of the exhibition’s most poignant pieces, photographer Dick Lau visited elderly, bedridden patients – some terminally ill – and asked them where they’d go if they could experience the outside world once more.

One man shared his most cherished memory: strolling through Hong Kong’s Ocean Park with his wife. He wished for one last afternoon there. Another, a former public minibus driver, said his final wish was to take his family on one last ride.

In response, Lau printed life-size photo backdrops and staged photoshoots with the patients and their families inside the hospital, creating a vision of a future that could never come to pass. Lau said the photoshoots helped the patients find a sense of peace.

“They’re in the final stages of life. The only thing that matters to them is how much more time they can spend with their loved ones.”

The truth in imagery

While the works of the artists use metaphors to transport viewers backward and forward in time, they ultimately reflect on the present moment – the time we have now with the people we cherish most, according to the curators.

“The underlying theme is the present,” says Sham. “We just want people to come here and reflect on their own lives.”

It’s impossible not to reflect on your own family when looking at these images. This speaks to the evocative power of the medium – a photograph rarely reveals the full truth but leaves room for emotion and memory.

Each family photo seems to convey one recurring message: I existed here, and this is how I loved.

“1000 Families,” curated by Blues Wong and Bobby Sham, is on display until September 4, 2016, as part of the Hong Kong International Photo Festival at ArtisTree, 1/F Taikoo Place, Cornwall House, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. For more details, visit HKIPF.