Skip to footer

'Homegrown' explores domestic life with humorous and fantastically posed photos

Children are the stars in Julie Blackmon’s timeless, unsettling images.

Homegrown By Julie Blackmon Radius Books 108 pp.
stack of books What are you reading?
  • By Melanie Stetson Freeman

When I first saw Julie Blackmon’s “Girl Across the Street,” a photo of a little boy staring out the window at a little girl, I was transported back to my cousin Chris’s house in Pittsburgh, circa 1962. I knew that I had to see more of Blackmon’s spare, humorous creations. Luckily, there are 44 more like it in her wonderful new book, Homegrown.

Blackmon presents us with the timelessness of family dynamics in photos that look decades old, but are current. She makes us feel nostalgic about the past without idealizing it. She positions children in fantastical yet plausible situations. Every subject, every headless doll, is expertly placed.

Here are some of my favorites: In “Rooster,” a little girl hugs a big rooster in an empty room, her plastic farm set arrayed on the wooden floor, a brown UPS van visible through a curtained window. In “Airstream,” a little girl in a polka-dot swimsuit makes a face as an adult – only the hand shows in the frame – sprays bug spray all over her. A shiny silver trailer is visible in the background, with two children peering out of its window.

Blackmon usually uses family members or “whoever is around” as subjects. Her neighborhood in Missouri is her set. The few adults present are mostly anonymous – their faces hidden behind a magazine or their heads cropped out of the image.

At first I was simply amused by the photos. But if you live with them a while, you start to feel an edge in the work. There is tension in the disarray of everyday life. How does Blackmon manage to convey reality despite the fact that all the work is staged? How does she get candid expressions from her tiny subjects?

The answer: talent. I am a big fan.
 

Melanie Stetson Freeman is a Monitor staff photographer.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Homegrown' explores domestic life with humorous and fantastically posed photos
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2014/1222/Homegrown-explores-domestic-life-with-humorous-and-fantastically-posed-photos
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe