ポーランド人フォトグラファー、ジョアンナ・ピオトロヴスカ（Joanna Piotrowska）の初作品集。自身の家族を被写体としたステージフォト（やらせ写真）で構成される風変わりなこの「ファミリーアルバム」は、タイトル「FROWST（室内にこもったむっとする空気）」が親密でありながら風通しの悪さを現すように、家族というシステムがもつ堅固無比な繋がり（血縁関係）とその核に存在する苦悶や焦燥を表現している。被写体がとる奇妙なポージングは、ドイツ人心理療法家バート・ヘリンジャーが確立した「ファミリーコンスタレーション」という家族療法で取り入れられている動作から着想を得ている。イギリスの出版社MACKが主催する過去に写真集出版経験の無い作家の出版支援を目的とする「First Book Award」の2014年グランプリ受賞に伴い刊行。

‘Every activity in the relationship with a father allows “I” to develop, and at the same time destroys “I”. I find the father everywhere, where I think it’s me. There is no landscape without father.’ - Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

Joanna Piotrowska’s uncomfortable album, a series of staged family shots, insists upon the fundamental anxiety at the heart of the family: its system of relationships, adamantine bonds that are equally oppressive and rewarding. Her images display intimate family scenes – cosily paired bodies, meeting and converging, in images which teeter on the verge of a dysfunctional moment. In one snapshot, two adult brothers lie together on a Persian carpet wearing only white briefs; in another, the black-clothed bodies of two embracing women merge, suggesting the atavistic overlap of mother and daughter. The title itself, which denotes a warm or stuffy atmosphere, captures the paradoxical nature of the family: frowsty spaces are both cosy and claustrophobic, intimate and airless. The images are carefully staged: Piotrowska asked her family subjects to pose in almost sculptural gestures, re-enacting moments of intimacy – repeating spontaneous instants of tenderness, in performances which are imbued with a plethora of new meanings. Influenced by the philosophy of the German psychotherapist Bert Hellinger, Piotrowska integrated movements and gestures from Hellinger’s therapeutic method Family Constellations, which attempts to expose and heal multi-generational trauma. Her black-and-white images, intentionally nostalgic for lost moment of happiness, are shrewd observations of the tension of self that pervades every family dynamic.