Face Value
I started looking through my old photographs and realised what a pack of lies they were, that they just constructed a view of me that was a fiction and most of the things that ever happened in our family or to me weren't there in the photographs... You can build an image of yourself in your head in which it's only the good things that are valuable about you, and that's absolutely epitomised in the photos you keep.
– Jo Spence
Questioning why we value these images – contrived as they are – Jo Spence talks of how she saw herself as a young woman and the effects of ageing… 'How you look is crucial in our culture… photographs collude to keep this myth going – that unless you're young and beautiful, you're a non-starter.'
Jo Spence takes us through photographs from her "family album", blowing the dust off and looking a bit harder at the things society ignores so that we may confront ourselves and accept what we usually cover up.
Description source: Cinenova Catalogue (1994). Edited by Kate Norrish. Editorial committee: Elaine Burrows, Liane Harris, Helen de Witt