Normalizing Extraordinary Children: The Photobooks of Jill Krementz

Abstract

Abstract:This essay analyzes Jill Krementz's popular photobooks for children. Constructed in collaboration with her child subjects, Krementz's photobooks are of interest for apparently modeling what Marah Gubar calls a "kinship model" of childhood that stresses children's similarities to adults. But, despite children's role in production, the photobooks ultimately reframe children within conventional discourses. Even as the books try to humanize children marginalized by race or disability and afford certain children adult-like capabilities, their progressive goals are undercut by a drive to investigate and account for children in ways that render them as innocent and "other" objects of curiosity.