Haider Dhalla
Bonding, Playing, Staring, Sipping, 2021
Digital photography
Dimensions variable
With this project, I want to show my peers the inner workings of my family life. My family has a habit of slightly changing themselves when we have people over. That just means that we are the only people who have the full picture of our family dynamic. While I can't showcase the deepest interactions between my family members, I can at least show you how they act when they don't think anyone is watching.
For this project, I took it upon myself to put my family on display for my peers to see: Amber, and Sasha in their natural environment. To achieve this goal, get my family’s consent, then start a very low stakes game of hide and seek. I’d hide, take my photos of unsuspecting family members, then walk away or wait for them to notice me. To spice things up a bit, I’d use any object or angle I could to obstruct any vision my family has of me. The railing of the stairs hid my intentions from my unsuspecting brother and Mom is oblivious to most external stimuli so all I needed to do to catch her off guard was keep my mouth shut.
One of my biggest influences for this project was a Colombian photographer named Andrés Ríos. While looking for inspiration, a friend directed me to a website, <https://retinalatinoamerica.com/proyectos/andres-rios-covid19>, displaying a series of candid shots of her family. Candid photography is among my favorite genres and I was captured by the intimacy of each photograph. It felt almost as if I was being given a personal tour of Andrés’s home and I wanted to emulate that in my work.
My goal was to achieve an intimate look into my family life while also leaving distance to ensure an outside perspective. I was stalking my family so you could see their true colors as best as I could display them with a still frame.
