Families

When you make a reservation for an expo, you can attend at anytime between the opening and closing of the exhibition. The confirmation email refers to the first date of the exhibition. Be sure to check the partners' opening hours.

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Who do you consider to be your family? And how do you record your personal history? We all use photography to sketch an image of our family and pass on stories to future generations. For the exhibition ‘Families’ we're diving into the FOMU collection in search of family photos.

We invite you to discover historical photo albums as well as photos by contemporary artists with a critical take on the traditional family portrait. These artists and photographers explore the complexity, and sometimes discomfort, of family relationships. They rewrite history with intimate photos, the likes of which you won’t often find in typical photo albums. A dialogue thus emerges between now and the past, between what we cherish and what we dare to question. 

Every year, FOMU invites an artist to reflect on the collection. Especially for this expo, author Niña Weijers has written ten personal texts on the theme of family. Visual artist Ugo Woatzi has also created a series of family portraits for the Kaiserpanorama. This large wooden viewing box from 1905 is designed to allow twenty-five people to gather round it and view stereoscopic photos together. You can see the Kaiserpanorama in action every first Sunday of the month.

In a time when motherhood, the nuclear family and the idea of 'chosen family' are being hotly debated, ‘Families’ offers a surprising look at a topic that affects us all: family.

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With more than 200 photographs from the FOMU collection by, among others: 

Hélène Amouzou, Emmy Andriesse, Diane Arbus, Cecil Beaton, Henri Becker, Henri Beng, Livinius Jacobus Beniest & Zoon, Léon Bovier, Camille Orso Caël, Tom Callemin, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lynn Cohen, Bieke Depoorter, Omar Viktor Diop & Lee Shulman, Mike Disfarmer, Robert Doisneau, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Mayara Ferrão, Charles Froelich, Seiichi Furuya & Christine Furuya-Gössler, Henri Geirland, Gustave Ghuys, Victor Guidalevitch, René Guiette, Sunil Gupta, Jitka Hanzlová, Eikoh Hosoe, Peter Hujar, Bernard Jacobs & Cie, Lebohang Kganye, William Klein, Mous Lamrabat, Youqine Lefèvre, Vuyo Mabheka, Diana Markosian, Amatus Harry Nevejans, Giulia Niccolai, Bernard Plossu, Emile Pochet, Jacques Joseph Prévot, Marc Riboud, Paul Sano, Jacob van Crewel (Jeune), Bertien van Manen, Léopold Vanderstraeten, Edward Walton (Fils), Edouard Wettstein, Carmen Winant, Ugo Woatzi … alongside a host of anonymous photographers and their families.