Family: Photographers Photograph Their Families

Even the most disciplined of artists cannot capture relatives without revealing aspects of themselves-an internal ""mechanism"" photo editor Spencer-Wood showcases in her lovely, if slight, collection of family-centric photographs. Consisting of 175 haphazardly arranged images that span 150 years, Spencer-Wood's compilation includes works by both photography superstars (Alfred Stieglitz, Nan Goldin) and lesser known shutterbugs. Arranged neither chronologically nor with a strong narrative arc, Spencer-Wood's images don't give her pictures a proper context. While it's fun to admire Stieglitz protege Edward Steichen posing jauntily with his sister, or Robert Adam's wife frolicing with Sally, their white mop of a dog, the lack of structure and loose interpretation of ""family"" distract from the book's theme. However, intriguing gems like Abelardo Morell's ""Laura and Brady in the shadow of our house,"" which captures the Cuban photographer's children playacting in a makeshift house created by light and imagination, still abound; as sociologist Henri Peretz notes in his brief introduction, photographers of kith and kin take the greatest risks-and reap the greatest rewards, making ""the most common of projects-the consecration of the family-their own.""