Social Function of Family Photography Albums

The family photo albums are the photographic collections that taking and collecting them began from the early years of the photography invention and it is still continuing. The family photo album, even in its simplest form, like a wallet, indicates that we belong to a larger group or community. Paralleled with the photographic technological evolutions and advancements, private family history, and social changes, the apparent and content form of the family photo album have varied. The present survey aims to study the content and apparent changes of the family photo album from the early years of the photography invention until before photography entered into the world of the digital technology. This survey pays attention to the material form of the photo album and its virtual form such as the stored electrical files in the computer memories or the individual pages of the internet users. At the beginning, this thesis has surveyed the trend of the photographic technological advancements and its effect on the apparent form of the family photo album. These changes in Iran and the West are separately examined. As follows, I have described the social functions of the family photo album and the importance of surveying them and the initiative methods by the Western researchers for analyzing the family photo albums; and finally, in order to analyze the album reading methods and their functions and importance in the scientific research domain, I have read an Iranian family photo album dating to 1980s and 1990s.The family photo albums are not only a bed for maintaining the family photos but also they serve like the holly family book or history by preserving our memories. In this survey, it has been attempted besides mentioning the individual functions that a family photo album has as a private collection, we determine the album social functions and examine the role of the family photo album in maintaining the individual and collective memories and we observe the effects of the social and political changes in society to better understand the history. By enjoying the available sources and the theorists’ and researchers’ opinions and analyzing the information, the findings and results of this survey have been obtained. Conducting this survey, we concluded that the family photo albums containing postcards and photos, etc. not only help preserve the family history and appreciate family but verify family as a group. By establishing the social interaction, albums consolidate friendships. The family album serves as the family history; represents the family social position and class; and describes the family relations and social roles of the family members. Albums represent the individuals’ self-image and, in this way, they give meaning to the social and individual identity. The family photo album suggests the unsaid stories and memories of the social events. Thus, it holds the people collective memory that is spatially in the same direction with the photo album.