Pictures of Home

When viewing Jonas Bendiksen’s portraits of his young family, the proverbial phrase ‘home is where the heart is’ springs to mind. When asked to reflect on this universal theme of ‘home’, the Magnum photographer choose to turn his camera on the intimacies of family life. The series focuses on Bille, the newest member of the Bendiksen household, documenting the new bonds and shifting dynamics that occur with her arrival.

The series offers up an endearingly bare-all scenario, where split coco-pops and temporarily abandoned toys, that follow small sticky-fingered children, flow from image-to-image. In amongst the whirlwind of home life, shot in playful tones, Bendiksen seeks out symbolic moments and isolates them. A quiet conversation, a hug, a newborn wrinkled foot: collectively are intended to celebrate family life — with all the exhausting and rewardingly blissful moments it entails. As Bendiksen writes, “These are some of the most important pictures I’ll ever take.”

Magnum Home, organized in collaboration with Fujifilm, is a worldwide project involving sixteen Magnum photographers who were invited to respond to the concept of ‘home’. The exhibition has travelled between Tokyo, London and New York, and now will open at the Photokina trade fair, in Cologne. Here, Bendiksen who will give a talk at the latest exhibition shares his own thoughts:

“These are some of the most important pictures I’ll ever take—but not because they are necessarily very interesting for others to see. This summer, when Bille arrived and Boe went from being our little baby to being a big sister, is one that I will never forget. I wonder what it will be like looking at them in 20 years. This time capsule from when Anna and I were young, and the kids were just two bundles of limitless potential.”

See more stories from the Home project here.