Photography Atelier

Francine Sherman

What makes a family?  Love, choice, commitment, patience, comfort, energy, fun, caring, strength, hope, creativity, sharing.  All of these are evident in the routines of daily life.  Families wake, learn, work, play, eat, and rest together.  They create, nurture, laugh and cry together. Over a few months in 2021, as we emerged from the altered reality of late summer and fall pandemic, I photographed the daily life of one family in New York.  I am grateful for their generosity in sharing their ordinary moments.

Artist Bio

Through environmental portraits and documentary photography I explore the lives of women and girls and the meaning of family and community. My work as a photographer exists alongside my forty-year career as an attorney for children, clinical law professor, and policy consultant on issues related to gender, children’s rights and the youth legal system.

Individual narrative is central to my law and policy work—and narrative, both explicit and suggested, guides my photography as well. Drawing on my practice as a lawyer, I try to co-create these narratives with the subjects of my photography.

I am co-founder of two youth art and activism nonprofits—Artistic Noise and I Am Why—which work to expand young activists’ power and policy reach through artistic expression.  My collaborative photographic portraits and the conversations they inspired are published in an art and social justice book,  I Am Why Reclaiming the Lens, have been exhibited in New York, Boston and San Francisco and are featured in non-profit publications.