On Family: The Challenges and Joys of Family Life: A Photographic Project

This arresting collection from the School of Life (On Confidence), an organization dedicated to helping people live more fulfilled lives, explores the complexities of family. Alongside color portraits, subjects consider what it feels like to be abandoned by a parent (“At 40 years old, I think, ‘What if I got home and he was just there?’ ” a woman named Eleanor says about the father who left when she was eight) and the effects of physical and emotional distance from loved ones (Joan details how her adult son’s move away from home reignited grief stemming from her mother’s death). Many of the entries detail a family’s sorrows, though they’re often woven through with threads of joy and resilience, as when one father reflects on how living on the opposite side of the world from his young daughter has taught him “strength, acceptance, and in a weird way, more love.” Such complexities are the strength of the collection, though an overlong introduction that provides questions to help readers investigate their own family dynamics feels discordant. Still, it’s a moving look at the ties that bind. (Aug.)