"Self-Portrait Watching the Soaps" March 3, 1979

As stated in Judy Gelles’ reflection on her career, she incorporates her multifaceted identity as an artist, a mother, a woman, and a social being into her photographic encounters. The “Family Portrait” series, created between 1977 and 1982 addresses cultural assumptions and stereotypes concerning the role of women within domestic life. Incorporating text and image together, Gelles describes via the visual and autobiographical, stories concerning hidden and even mundane details of everyday familial life. Her subsequent work has built off of this hybrid photographic approach, with series such as China Rules and Fourth Grade Stories in which Gelles interviews school children concerning their perspectives on law, wishes, and worries and inscribes them into the image of the work, surrounding the bodies of her subjects with their stories. Her works render visible the real voices of women and children in photographic social commentaries.