Carol Lazare & Lilly Lazare-Green

This photograph is from a series of photographs taken in the early 1990’s about families. In particular, the series examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, and fathers and daughters and fathers and sons. This relationship is evident in the subject’s body language, and in their physical relationship to each other. 

Also taken into account when looking at the photographs is the relationship between the subjects and the photographer. It has been said that any photograph, particularly a portrait, is also a portrait of the photographer. Lazare used her living room as a studio, with a backdrop of a discarded painting (a gift to Lazare from a friend). 

Lazare divulges that the portrait, Carol Lazare & Lilly Lazare-Green (the artist’s sister and niece), was one of the most important in the series. With this portrait, Lazare made the connection that she had been searching for, and made fewer portraits after this one. In 1995, she stopped making portraits and turned her attention to large scale urban landscapes.

The photograph was taken with a Pentax 6 × 7 medium format camera with Ilford black and white film and printed in the darkroom on Ilford Multigrade FB (fibre based) paper.