Photographing a Special Birthday Party in Taipei

There’s nothing I love more than when a past client asks me to come back and photograph a special occasion or milestone. Much like with my Year in the Life clients, this feels like a collaboration, not a transaction. Working with a family over a longer period of time is a partnership in bearing witness to and documenting their story so that it can be passed from one generation to the next. As someone who loves nothing more than to sit around with my family talking about grandparents and childhood experiences, getting lost in the mythology and lore of our particular clan, this feels like important work to me. I want to play a part in other families doing this.

But there’s another thing that happens. The more time I spend with a family, the more invested I become in their story. I can’t help it; the more I know them the more I love them. That’s why I was happy to come back to M and M—a dynamic mother/daughter duo—a year after our last session to document a very special 80s-themed 10th birthday party. There was slime, there was cake being slammed into faces, and there was a cat eating things that clearly weren’t food (and liking it!). There was also a lot of hugs.