Famzine

I have a side hustle as co-founder of an archival photography project, The Family Museum, which I started in 2017 with filmmaker Nigel Shephard. The archive is a collection of around 40,000 original amateur family photographs and 600 photo albums, dating from the 1860s to the noughties, which Nigel has put together over a period of 35 years. The project gives us a unique opportunity to share more than a century and a half of found images and visual stories about everyday experiences, which help broaden our understanding of ‘family’ as expressed through photography. The archive also offers an opportunity for research into the history and practice of amateur image-making. Every year, we publish a photography zine, edited and designed by me and Nigel. Our three editions have featured contributions from fellow collectors, artists, curators, academics and family historians, who all underline the importance and relevance of vernacular photography by sharing their work and experiences in the field. In November 2023, The Family Museum was invited to speak at the conference ‘Talks on everyday imaging – the analogue and digital realm of the vernacular’ in Budapest. The event was organised by the recently formed, Budapest-based Eidolon Centre for Everyday Photography, and was hosted at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. Nigel gave an outline of our project and work in the family photography niche, and a moving account of the importance of family photos to his own relatives. Our fellow speakers included international academics, critics, curators and artists (Geoffrey Batchen, Michal Simunek, Lukas Birk of Fraglich Publishing, Judit Gellér, Miklós Tamási of Fortepan, Sándor Kardos, Annebella Pollen, Joanna Zylinska and Joachim Schmid). The talks ranged far and wide in their themes, from analogue-digital encounters in photography (Michal Simunek) to Hungary’s history of researching vernacular imagery (Judit Gellér) to mass photography (Annebella Pollen) and the future of photography itself (Joanna Zylinska). Ahead of the event, I interviewed Eidolon’s founding Director, Róza Tekla Szilágyi, to talk about the origins of the Eidolon Centre and its mission to promote the importance and relevance of vernacular imagery in Hungary and beyond (https://thefamilymuseum.co.uk/arc/). Róza also interviewed Nigel and I for the excellent Eidolon Journal (https://everydayphotography.org/journal/the-number-of-ownerless-vernacular-images-in-circulation-now-is-huge). www.thefamilymusuem.co.uk