Page 138 - Cultural Studies Volume 11
P. 138
132 CULTURAL STUDIES
Slavick wearing the dress she would eventually embroider with the words ‘mutter mutter
mutter mutter mutter’
Source Family photograph taken by William H.Slavick. Collection of the artist.
photographs then, my face and body—so far as they manage to outlast me
—will survive as a highly edited version of the whole person I managed to
be behind an ever-ready grin. 24
Price would ‘give a lot to have a stack of black-and-white pictures of moments’
that captured such things as the ‘furious look’ in his ‘father’s gray eyes on a
warm Sunday evening’ when he told his wife that ‘she’d stolen his share’ of
25
Price and his brother. But there are no such pictures for Price, for most of us.
Family albums are closely edited; they ‘tend to include [only] those images on
which family members can agree, which tell a shared story.’ 26
Most families agree on the same shared stories: Happy Holiday, Happy
Vacation, Happy Graduation, Happy Birthday, Happy First Bicycle, Happy New
Home, Happy New Baby, Happy Wedding. Though, as family members we can
