David Hilliard has been photographing his life on the East Coast and elsewhere for over two decades. He uses multi-image panoramas to tell nuanced stories. Made over long passages of time, Hilliard’s images “reveal his own shifting constructions of home, masculinity, desire and family,” writes Houston Center for Photography in the press release for the exhibition. Titled Chosen Family, the images in the show explore the way Hilliard positions himself within three worlds: his liberal father’s gritty New England life, his conservative mother’s evangelical world in southwest Florida, and the queer families he has created throughout the country, but primarily in his own homes in Massachusetts and Main.

Hilliard’s work looks at how we maintain the ties that bind a “traditional” family when it has chosen to separate. And asks, how might we situate ourselves more comfortably within our own constructions of family? The images “remind us that the story is fully ours to tell – it all depends on where we place ourselves and how we choose to frame our view.”

Houston Center for Photography
Chosen Family
by David Hilliard
through July 18, 2018