We Are Family – Siân Davey at the National Portrait Gallery

26.09.2017

Photographer Siân Davey recently worked with our print and framing experts, using Metro’s premier bespoke service, to produce digital C-Type prints in walnut frames for her current exhibition “We Are Family” which is showing at the National Portrait Gallery in London until October 7th.

As a photographer with a previous 15-year career in psychotherapy, Siân Davey’s work often investigates the psychological landscapes of both herself and those around her – family and community are central to her practice.

We Are Family is no exception and her series of images portray the diversity and reality of British family life in 2017; photographs were taken over a month-long period across every region of the UK, from Devon to London, the Midlands and Yorkshire to Scotland’s Hebrides.

They examine the ways in which we form a family, how we rely on one, the responsibilities and sacrifices families entail, the unique, integral things they provide – and how such dynamics coalesce around food and mealtime, photographing thirty-one families of all shapes and sizes in twenty-one days.

Siân comments: “In Ancient Greece, scholars wrote on a palimpsest – a piece of parchment used again and again. The word literally means ‘again rubbed smooth’. The parchment was never entirely cleaned, so traces of its history always remained, merging with the new.

“The place we share food – a grand dinner table, a sofa, a bed, or a rug on the floor – is a palimpsest. Countless memories, moments, thoughts and experiences have been exchanged here.

“Yet each of us are palimpsests too. We are the evidence of the generations before us, the culmination of everything up to this moment.

“Every time we come together, we play witness to that. We bring our history to the table. The photographs here are a celebration of diversity. But, more importantly, they are a celebration of love – of togetherness, no matter what.”

We Are Family showing at

Print Shop Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE

Exhibition dates: 21st September – 7th October 2017

Opening times: Sunday – Wednesday: 10:00am – 6:00pm; Thursday & Friday: 10:00am – 9:00pm