Family Sequences
October 23 – November 22, 1981
Integral to my various bodies of work is an interest in time and change. I often configure photographs and text in series to examine gender, aging, race, ethnicity, and the built environment. This work exhibited at Blue Sky Gallery in 1981 — Family Sequences — uses sequences of candid photographs to examine interpersonal family relationships and place family in a social context.
The work references snapshots but differs in intent. Typically, family snapshots highlight and celebrate ritual moments of domestic life, such as weddings, birthdays, and vacations. Snapshots are preferably positive and flattering. Family Sequences concern the mundane, neutral, and temporal moments of everyday life, in addition to ritual occasions. While people occasionally appear happy In Family Sequences, they often look bored, tired, detached, and have divided attention. When ritual occasions are depicted, the intent is to question the ritual’s function and what actually occurs rather than simply to commemorate the close-knit happy family. Gender and generational roles are explored. In many of the sequences traditional stereotypical roles are evident such a Lill serving Mark coffee and Mark lifting a heavy turkey. Shag carpets, heavy furniture-like television consoles, and fashionable mustaches capture the style of the early 1980s.
Until the advent of digital photography, family snapshots (especially those framed or displayed in family albums) usually included only the one “best” photo. I use sequences of images in order to emphasize continuing interaction and gestures over time and to demonstrate how actions come together and fall apart, not the “decisive moment” when all is in harmony. In exhibition, the sequences are double or triple hung to facilitate comparisons and connections. Following the narrative over time, one sees the growth, change, and repeated patterns of people’s lives. I worked on Family Sequences through 1986. The individual prints are approximately 3 x 4 ½ inches. Each sequence of 3 to 6 images is overmatted. The mat size varies from 9 x 20 ¾ to 9 x 37 ¼ inches
Gail Rebhan is a Washington, D.C. based photographer and Professor Emerita of Photography at Northern Virginia Community College. She has an M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts and an undergraduate degree from Antioch College.
Integral to her various bodies of work is an interest in time and change. Her works, which often configure photographs and text in series, examine gender, aging, race, ethnicity, and the built environment. The child of immigrants, Rebhan documents the experience of several individual Jews under Hitler’s reign in Europe and their immigration stories. Her Art on the ART bus project commissioned by Arlington County, Virginia tells immigration/assimilation stories crossing generations and ethnic groups. She also creates photo-collages examining the cultural history of specific sites in Washington, D.C. and surrounding communities. Her recent self-portraits examine the taboo subject of female aging.
Rebhan has had works in hundreds of exhibitions including at the Lentos Kunstmuseum (Linz, Austria), Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany), and Blue Sky Gallery (Portland, Oregon). In conjunction with her first museum retrospective Gail Rebhan, About Time at the American University Museum-Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC, MACK Books published Gail Rebhan, About Time with running commentaries by Sally Stein. In 2025 the retrospective will travel to the California Museum of Photography at the University of California, Riverside. Rebhan photographs and coordinates exhibitions with the Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition
