Doug Dubois' domestic photographs are the kind of images that mandate close inspection. On the surface they reveal nothing particularly remarkable about his subjects or the environments they inhabit, but when you allow yourself to sit and absorb the images fully, wonderful subtleties begin to emerge. Dubois' true strength originates in his attention to detail, which when seen in a larger domestic context begins to cumulatively inform the relationships between his subjects and their environment.
Dubois' photographs do not exert the feeling of a straight documentary approach; his vision transmits a more interpretive and fictionalized account of domestic life. This is in large part probably because he is photographing his own family, which inherently brings with it a level of subjectivity. In a recent interview with Alec Soth, Dubois described these early family photographs by stating:
"Besides articulating and defining something akin to a domestic genre in photography, it was a very early attempt to reconcile, so to speak, postmodernist tactics and strategies with modernist/realist work."
You can find the entire interview, which has numerous great insights, here.
