Al Bustan Family

This portrait was taken in 2015 in Lebanon at the Al Bustan Hotel.What appears at first glance to be a conventional studio portrait, a document of genuine intimacy, is in fact a fiction. I invited strangers to meet me in a rented hotel room to pose as an artificial family for the camera. The family portrait depicts a particular mythology or stereotypical ideal of a happy life, yet family is an ongoing performance where roles are assigned, with a constant expectation of an audience, both private and public. Gender and hierarchical norms are enforced through the family, and the act is rehearsed much like a script to a dramatic play. I’m interested in both the performance of the portrait and our innate fluency in its codes and gestures, as well as the shifting paradigm of the traditional family structure. The work explores the public image of family, themes of photographic truth, gender, class, culture and identity. As indicated by the title, each family is given the name of the hotel wh