Family Stranger

What if the person you trust the most ended up in jail? It’s hard to imagine a loved one committing a serious crime. Family Stranger is a photographic series about families of prisoners, who are suddenly confronted with ethical issues that put their social relationships under pressure. In a long process of reevaluation, family members will have to rethink their relationship with their criminal relative and decide whether or not they can live with what he or she has done. While the lives of these families continue, the inmate enters a time capsule of sorts, remaining imprisoned.

The goal of Family Stranger is to bring awareness to the hardships that these families endure. Like the prisoner, the family is often socially condemned, with the risk of isolation from society. As a result, both adults and children consider the subject to be taboo, or at least very difficult to discuss. With this book, Wiosna van Bon (NL) shows the different ways in which families deal with this situation.