At its best, a portrait is a window through which you peer into the landscape of a person’s life. That intimacy makes subjects almost family, and in Joe Vitone’s case, they are. Family Records, his exhibit on display at the Akron Art Museum until Oct. 27, captures his Rust Belt relations over the last 20 years. Here, his Italian-American aunt, Grace Falitico, an avid gardener, poses thoughtfully before her garden shed in her Stow backyard.

“It’s not unusual for me to ask them where they’d want to take the picture, so that it’s somewhere particularly comfortable for them,” says Vitone. The series charts birthday parties, quiet evenings and chores, serving as a record of an America not often reflected in museums. “Akron has good, solid, blue-collar workers,” says Vitone. “They’ve done well and graduated from high school and they’ll do a job, enter in trades and that kind of thing, but they’re not living in New York City or anything.