Family photography and motherhood - navigating the journey to becoming an active part of your family album
Recently I turned 40 and graduated from uni with an MFA in photography. You can read about this here where I talk about this mid-life career transition and what I learnt from it. During my two years of study my research focused on the relationship between motherhood and photography. Discussions around motherhood are complex and they get no easier when talking about ensuring mums are an active part of family photography. Here are my thoughts, and what that means for when we work together.
When it comes to family photography, many of us mums feel responsible for documenting family life, but rarely appear in the photographs ourselves. There are so many reasons for this, none of which are particularly simple to fix. Firstly, we can get tired of having to ask our partners to write us into our family album in a way that doesn’t require us stopping and saying ‘can you just take a photo of me at this point in time?’ Despite the fact that we are constantly noticing little moments of connection between them and the kids, and reflecting on how things are changing as they grow, for many of us it is a real frustration not to have that reciprocated easily. Not to mention that when we take photos of our family, we put effort, even if it is only briefly, into considering the angles, the surroundings and the light. Sometimes it just feels easier to get a rough selfie before the whole thing has passed by and morphed into something else: something new. A new stage, a new phase, a new part of life.
Without a doubt there are so many times and places to ask for a picture to be taken and I’m here for all of them, but for mums there’s more to this than simply saying it. The mental load of motherhood is heavy, so many decisions and constant responsibility. We spend all of our time and energy caring - giving to everyone else before ourselves. We’re growing and changing too, and it can feel disappointing to us that this doesn’t seem worth recording. It can feel sad to think that it doesn’t typically resonate with our other half to document our part in the journey together. It’s hard to say ‘can you just take a picture’ because we don’t always want to stop and look at the camera. In honesty, it’s often the last thing we want to do, lose the moment where we had the feeling of wanting to keep it close. There’s a huge difference between a posed group shot and recognising a subtle everyday moment of connection. My research has told me that to so many of us, it’s such a meaningful act to have someone independently catch those times on camera. Not only does it help us to feel seen, it lays the groundwork for us to be able to look back on family photographs and know that we were a valued part of the story.
Even more complex is dealing with our image when we see ourselves in family photography. If only it was as simple for mums as fixing a more regular appearance in the shot. Right? One of the main reasons I ended up here, writing this, is because I’m walking the journey too. Photography brings me so many feels, I absolutely love to catch a mum in a photograph with their kids. Yet this doesn't change the fact that looking at my own body in photographs is a constant conversation with myself. I’m a huge believer in leading by example, and this dialogue with myself is something I’ve been working on for a while now, but I want you to know that being a photographer doesn’t make me any less vulnerable to seeing what I perceive as my flaws downloaded from the camera.
There is no one size fits all approach to any of these issues. Without a doubt, we all need different things on different days - it can often feel like we’re walking the same road, but to hang on to the fairly weak metaphor, we’re never wearing identical shoes. We have other halves who have varying levels of investment in getting us in the photo and full disclosure, no one can really change how we feel about our body in family photographs. However, I believe it is so important to keep an open conversation and have people who walk the journey alongside us.
I see my role as a family photographer as someone who can immediately ease the mental load of making sure you all feature in pictures together. However you choose to use that time, whether it is at home or out in one of your favourite places, the pressure on mum to record it is off. The responsibility of catching those fleeting in-between seconds of connection that so many of us love comes to me, and it’s something I’m here for every single time.
When in comes to our relationship with our bodies, if you’re working with me, you won’t hear me telling you your feelings aren’t valid. How we talk to ourselves is a complex beast. However, you will hear me shouting from the rooftops about switching your focus from your perceived flaws to the value of being in family photography in the long term. I am a firm believer that as time moves forward and we look back at old photos, we become desensitised to what were our insecurities then and we see the wider significance of these images we have in our possession now.
Personally, these days I deal with being a mum and getting into photographs with my family by taking the opportunities more, rather than avoiding them completely. I am open (read very vocal) with my husband about how important it is to me that our kids will have family photographs that include all of us to look back on. He’s working on that, whilst for me it is a work in progress shifting my thinking around my body image. I am constantly reminding myself that the long term value of being in family photography with my kids is far greater than my feelings about my thighs (and my nose). I have also made a conscious change to how I approach seeing myself in family photographs, or any photography for that matter. I now no longer go straight in to pick fault with myself - I focus on looking for pictures I love. Which are the images where I see myself? Personally I think it’s unrealistic that I’ll love every single photo taken of me, but I seek out the photographs where I connect with myself and with my people - the pictures that reflect my own experience of the world.
When I’m having an off day, and I catch myself getting a bit dark on my image, I remind myself of the simple truth that if I’m not in the pictures now, I won’t have them in the future. I can’t go back, and neither can you. So if nothing else, for the sake of future you, and future them, keep taking the opportunities to be in photographs with your kids.
Somehow, I just don’t see any of us looking back and regretting it.
