I used to stay the night with families to photograph their lives.
Actual sleepovers. With young children, newborns, bedtime negotiations and whatever happened next.
I was in my thirties, single and didn’t seem to need much sleep. I’ve also always been a bit of a child, so arriving at someone’s home with my camera and an overnight bag felt like an adventure.
There was something wonderful about being there long enough for everyone to forget about being photographed. The house would settle into its own rhythm, and I got to see the little things a shorter visit might miss.
The way a baby was held. A tired conversation between parents. Children climbing into bed in the morning, peeling their parents eyelids back with their little hands. All the things that happen without anyone thinking, We should get a photograph of this.
Over the years, I’ve documented sleepovers, birthday parties, granny’s story, the terminally ill and the glorious, messy business of being a family.
It began with pro bono work for the Make-A-Wish Foundation in my late 20’s. That work changed my life. It showed me what an eye for the inbetween moments could give someone, and it remains the greatest gift photojournalism has given me.
I’ve spent years trying to explain the value of documenting family life, but it is much harder to explain what they might mean to you in twenty years.
Because you don’t yet know what you’ll miss.
It might be the way your child mispronounces a word. Your mum’s laugh. The kitchen in a house you no longer live in. A particular bedtime story, read in a particular voice.
It might be seeing yourself in the middle of it all. Holding, listening, laughing, being someone’s whole world.
So often, one person in the family peeks behind the phone. They have hundreds of pictures of everyone they love, and very little evidence of their own place in the story.
And I know the objections. The house is a mess. You’re exhausted. You’d like to lose some weight. Everyone’s busy. Perhaps next year.
But the life you’re waiting to tidy up is the life your family will remember and you will never look as young as you do today, but when you all look back, you won’t even notice the lines on your face or the extra pounds.
They’ll recognise the washing on the chair, the toys underfoot, the cat making itself comfortable somewhere inconvenient. They’ll see the home they grew up in and the people who made it theirs.
There’s room for all of it.
That’s why I wish every family could do this once a year. Give someone a little time to notice what you’re too close to see. Let them photograph you together, record the voices, listen to the stories and catch something of who you are right now.
Each year would hold a different chapter. New teeth. New jokes. New people at the table. Children getting taller. Parents getting older. A life changing gradually enough that you barely notice it happening.
I still think about those sleepovers. How much I loved being invited into the middle of someone’s world.
At the time, we were making photographs.
Years later, I hope they can press play or open an album and think: There we are. That was us.
I can’t think of much more precious than that.
If you’d love to document a chapter of your own family life, Family Story sessions start at £450 which come as a gift voucher packaged in a beautiful box with a 2 hour session, short film and unlimited images + 10 mini prints.
Once a year, we capture the people, the voices and the everyday moments that make this time yours. You don’t need a special occasion. Being a family is occasion enough.
You can find out more here - https://www.theuntitled.uk/family-pricing