Some Journeys We Take Together
The Spirit of The Family by Al Gore
We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by images. No matter what the issue, no matter what the event, no matter what the philosophy-they all are thrust upon us with images that are either meticulously planned or spontaneously created. We are a society that communicates via images, whether the images are genuine or artificial.
So it is both fitting and ingenious that when Al and Tipper Gore decided to research and write a book about family, that they didn't stop with the final typed words on the page of the book. Nor did they try to either randomly force images into the text or to change their story to fit the art they had. Rather, they came out with two books. The first is a traditional book called Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family and the second is an accompanying collection of photographs, The Spirit of Family.
The Spirit of the Family could easily pass as a coffee table book. It has the front cover appeal and the artistic integrity of a book of photographic art. But like all good art, it isn't the type of book that one would lightly flip through while one's mind was planning out dinner or engaged in light-hearted banter with a friend. It is a book that commands attention with images that are sometimes unexpected, sometimes touching, and always vivid. It is a book that demands your attention as it compels you to search for the story and to place it into your own words and experience.
Does The Book Pander To Your Politics?
The book is a creation of Al and Tipper Gore, in collaboration with Gail Buckland and Katy Homans. It shouldn't surprise anyone when I say that the images in the book do stretch the bounds of traditional two-parent, white-picket fence families. Yes, those types of families are included, but so are families that come in many different shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. If you find an image of two women kissing or two men embracing to be offensive, then expect to be offended when you read this book.
Also, if you prefer that the images you digest of people be strictly Hollywood-sanitized with identical body shapes, hairstyles, and face painting or surgery, then this book will disappoint you. The images in this book are of real people doing real things. There are images that are bound to strike chords and awake memories-though which pictures will do it for you will be different than those that do it for others in the books.
This book captures the different choices that families make. And no, I'm not just talking about whether a family will have one parent or two or three, or what gender the parents will be. I'm also talking about choices made in terms of household care, fashion, exuberance, care, entertainment, etc.
Is the book pushing a particular political agenda? Well, that is something you will have to decide for yourself. I found the political message to be rather low-key, though the social message to be extremely strong. In fairness, though, my views on family are not so very different than the views held by the Gores, so I will allow that someone of a more conservative bent than I may find hidden agendas in the book.
Circle of Life
The photos are presented without any captions or chapter headings. There is very little text in this book-only an introduction, acknowledgements, and quotations on family life that are sprinkled generously throughout.
The book immediately takes you into the images. The book begins not with a title page or a copyright page, but with nearly formal family portraits. You must page through 13 images of extended families before getting to the official title page and introduction.
The book then launches into a cycle of family life, a cycle loosely defined and never outright stated. The images begin with couples, couples who are falling in love, who are jealous, who are laughing. Images of a teenage couple posing in their formals for photos before the prom are juxtaposed with images of an elderly couple sharing a Sprite on a white sandy palm-tree bedecked beach.
These photos are followed by pictures of weddings and then pictures of pregnancy. The pictures of childbirth and infancy are joyous and nudity is displayed unabashedly and in a way that is respectful and uplifting to the family. With equal joy is the display of religious moments with our children-baptisms, Christening, and what might be a bris. In fact, many of the religious moments of a family's life are displayed throughout this book and the images are from many different types and forms of religion from Christianity to Judaism to Islam.
The next section is filled with pictures of childhood and growing. Not all of these images are happy ones, for what childhood is entirely without pain or fear or frustration? In fact, there are some images that we'd rather not see. I in particular found one sequence of pictures to be highly disturbing. It begins with an innocuous game of cops and robbers between two children who have set up figurines and are playing with toy guns. It is followed on the next page with three bearded, white, baseball-becapped men squatting on a porch in either boots or barefoot drinking Budweisers and casually examining a rifle.
That still innocuous photo is atop the image that made me gasp and forced me to walk away from the book for a few hours. The image that disturbed me was of the proud, smiling young mom watching a serious-looking man wrap the hands of a not-yet toddler around a revolver while bullets, pistols, and casings lay scattered around the baby.
While there is a very large section on children, the Gores do not neglect those families that are without children or whose family extends to their pets and animal companions. There are fascinating pictures of people with their cats, dogs, snakes, warthogs and ducks.
Finally, the images cycle to late life, to the passing of the torch from one generation to the next, to pictures of death, grieving, and recovery.
High-Quality Images
The Gores collected these images from a wide variety of photographers-each of whom is credited under each image. They looked at more than 15,000 photographs to find the 256 images used in the book. They used photos from photographers who were still in school to those who are well known to fans of photography. The works and styles of such photographers as Sally Mann, Gerald Cyrus, Edward Keating, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Lee Friedlander, and Annie Leibovitz.
The photos range in styles, some in black and white, some in color; some obviously posed, some delightfully candid; some starkly realistic, some stylized. Each image is given the space it needs based on its subject. Sometimes there are two to three images per page, other times an image spreads across two pages.
And yes, there are two pictures of the Gore family. One of a young Al Gore reading Snow White to his three little girls and the other of a young exuberant Gore family that seem to be about to pose for a formal portrait-once they can get the dogs off the couch and their laps.
Story Of A Family
Each of the images in this book tells a story about a family. And each of the families, whether happy or unhappy is unique. But the spirit of family is in many ways the same for all of them-and for all of us. It is a spirit that can seem fleeting and elusive amid the bustle and noise of our daily lives. But it can be framed clearly in a frozen moment of time captured by a photographer who blends skill with patience and good fortune.--from the introduction, p. 20
The Spirit of Family impressed and surprised me. It came packaged with the Gore's book Joined at the Heart and was the book that first caught my attention. It is an excellent accompaniment to Joined at the Heart, but it is also a book that tells its own story and stands on its own. Joined at the Heart is a book filled with compassion and heart. The Spirit of Family is much more immediate and compelling. It is a book that challenges and reassures at the same time. Somewhere within the pages we will find ourselves or our siblings or our parents or our lovers. Somewhere within the pages we will find the places that we don't want to be or where we yearn to be.
Ultimately, The Spirit of Family shows us those common bonds which we share. It illustrates the journey that all of us take through life, a journey that we take with others in many different forms. It is a book that I will return to many times, each time finding a different story and a different experience to share. Before picking up this book, I would have argued that it was impossible to capture the spirit of family on something as two-dimensional as the pages of a book. After absorbing this book, however, I find myself standing corrected.
