family values

Although Bush seems to be cooling his heels for the time being on what the conservatives so convincingly called "the defense of marriage," the question of what constitutes a marriage or a family nowadays persists. Irish photographer Trish Morrissey (whose first US exhibition is showing in NY til the end of the month) effectively "deconstructs the trope of family photography by meticulously mimicking it." She's 37 years old, but she and her elder sister reinvent themselves as all the characters in a typical family drama. I find that her quirky contrasts between austerity and humor, artifact and artifice, are exactly the stuff that most families are made of.