Year in the Life: An entire year of storytelling with family photos.

I believe in the importance of preserving memories and family lore through photos more than anyone you’ll meet, and even I have trouble staying on top of putting together a family photobook every year. It just ends up becoming another thing on the list. Part of the problem is the brick wall of overwhelm that I hit when I save all of it for the last minute. I should keep track of favorite photos from each month that I want to put in the annual photobook at the end of the year. Do I do this? Of course not.

I love nurturing a family story over the course of a year for other people, though. I use the word nurture because the story of a family’s year is a living thing that needs to be tended to, mostly with time and nonjudgmental observation. For every family photography session I do, a story emerges. But the story from single sessions is a paragraph and the story of a family’s year is a novel. By the end of the story, the characters have had a lot of interesting experiences together and they’re different people. It’s the most satisfying kind of work to be invited into a family’s inner circle and be trusted enough to help them see and remember themselves. I hope the photobook I hand them at the end of the year will be a kind of mirror, and that they’ll see the best parts of who they are together reflected back.

Below are a few shots from a current Year in the Life project in process. Mei Mei couldn’t walk yet when we first met and now she’s keeping up with her big brothers!