In Blood Ties and Other Bonds, Diana Blok investigates the nuanced dynamics of human relationships through intimate portraiture. Created between 1985 and 1990, this series developed during a period of increasing social discourse around identity, gender roles, and non-traditional family structures. Rather than following dominant visual narratives shaped by mass media, Blok’s images focused on portraying real, often intimate, human relationships that resisted easy categorization or idealization.
Rooted deeply in her own experiences as a migrant constantly adapting to new environments, she photographs those within her personal circle—family, friends, and acquaintances—capturing them nude in settings that emphasized trust, vulnerability, and emotional proximity. The work resists conventional ideals of family by assembling an expanded kinship structure based on shared experience rather than lineage.
Visually, the project is notable for its simplicity and stark aesthetic. Blok's deliberate choice to remove backgrounds emphasizes the subjects’ isolation and intrinsic humanity, creating images that exist in an undefined, almost abstracted space. The artificial studio lighting accentuates the quiet dignity and directness of her subjects, allowing their vulnerability and natural imperfections to stand in sharp relief against commercialized ideals of physical beauty prevalent in popular media.
Technically, Blok used a medium-format camera with a Polaroid back, which enabled her to produce both preview images and high-resolution black-and-white negatives. The peel-apart Polaroid film she used yielded an instant positive and a printable negative, later used for gelatin silver prints.
Exhibited at the Fotogalería of Teatro San Martín, Buenos Aires (1987), and later touring internationally, Blood Ties and Other Bonds was subsequently featured in the retrospective I Challenge You to Love Me at the Cobra Museum, Amstelveen. The series was published as Blood Ties and Other Bonds (Contact Press, Amsterdam/Stemmle, Germany, 1990; German ed. Blutsbande), and works entered collections such as the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.
