Gillian Laub Explores Her Family’s Political Dramas

In an image from 2016 that is included in the book, Laub’s mother is shown seated on the couch in her living room. Smiling serenely, she is ensconced in a maximalist landscape of accoutrements: crystal goblets, ornate silver serving platters, gilt picture frames, velvety furnishings. (“I’ve always loved photographing people in their homes, because every single object is a signifier,” Laub told me.) The subject herself, a well-kept woman in her early seventies, is elegantly slim and made up, and, like her mother before her, is wearing fur. This representation of wealth and comfort is pierced by the picture’s clear punctum: a pink-and-white “Women for Trump” placard, placed on a bookcase. (Just below it, a V.I.P. pass to a Trump-Pence event is dangling from a lanyard on a cabinet doorknob.) In another image, from 2019, Laub’s two daughters and her sister are seen on a deck overlooking a swimming pool and a large, well-manicured garden. The image’s center, however, is dominated by the photographer’s pubescent nephew, who faces the camera, his head concealed beneath a mask bearing the image of Trump’s face, teeth bared in a familiar sneer. Like the placard in the photo of Laub’s mother, the mask, a proxy for the President, feels out of place in this otherwise wholesome scene. But is Trump, in fact, a disruption, or is he a guardian of this version of the American dream?