Imposter Parents

First four pictures:  

With My Family (1973) by Hans Eijkelboom. The artist would watch for fathers to leave for work, then knock on the doors of their families and ask them to pose with him sitting in as the replacement patriarch. 

 

Second four pictures: 

Front (2005-2007) by Trish Morrissey. A similar approach to Eijkelboom’s, Morrissey traveled to beaches in the UK and Australia and would approach families who had set up temporary encampments. She would ask to join the group, replacing the mother, who she would ask to switch places with and become the photographer. "These highly performative photographs are shaped by chance encounters with strangers, and by what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed. Ideas around the mythological creature the ‘shape shifter’ and the cuckoo are evoked,” she has written. "Each piece within the series is titled by the name of the woman who I replaced within the group."

Final image: 

Republican Derrick Anderson running for office in Virginia, posing as a happy family man to pick up the traditional voters. The woman and children in the picture are not his family, but instead the family of a lifelong friend (mysteriously missing from the portrait). 

Anderson is childless, living alone with his pet (much to the dismay of J.D. Vance, one has to assume).