Why do family portraits matter?

When my daughters were small, slides were very popular. (For those who don’t know, you’d buy a special slide film and develop it as slides instead of photos.) By the time my son was born, we were using regular film. Occasionally we’d get out the slide projector and look at old photos. My daughters would try to figure out which toddler we were looking at. (My oldest daughter was the bald one) and my son would search every slide for a picture of him. I felt bad that he wasn’t in any of them so I told him that a picture of my middle daughter was him (they both had tight curly hair). He happily looked at all the slides until we came to a photo of my daughter in the easter dress I sewed for her. He was furious. “Mom! Why did you put me in a dress!” Maybe that’s why he spent the next few years refusing to eat grilled cheese sandwiches unless they were called “boy cheese sandwiches.” 

My point with this story is that it was very important to him to find himself in our photos. (In case you’re feeling bad for him, we did take hundreds of photos of him with regular film.) Taking and displaying photos of your family is so important for a lot of reasons…

• They help us remember. 
• They tell stories.
• They show change.
• They help us feel like we belong.

Looking at our old photos was the perfect time for us to share old and funny stories and to remind them about the silly things they did when they were tiny. My daughter never misses a chance to remind me that I accidentally burned her while curling her bangs in one of our family photos! They also say they can each pinpoint the exact photo that was the day they stopped letting me do their hair and pick out their clothes. 

• Photography connects us to each other. 

One of my favorite things about photography is that it is about connection. When I am photographing someone I get to connect with them on a personal level so that I can help them feel comfortable and capture their personality in my image. When I’m photographing a family, I’m looking for the connections they feel with each other and then trying to freeze it in time. Recently when my daughter went to Venezuela she spent a whole summer asking every relative, neighbor, and at least one door to door salesman (she said she thought he was another cousin) for any photos they had of me or my family. There were no cameras in the town that I grew up in and I wish that I had photos of my family and my childhood. In the end, we found one photo of me as a 15 year old girl that my children will always cherish. I think they love it most because they get to make fun of my hair!