How does it feel to be photographed by a documentary family photographer?

To help people better understand what a documentary family photography session is like, I joined a group of amazing photographers here in Atlanta who use the same approach. We decided to photograph each other while we work to show what a documentary family photography session looks like behind the scenes.

The amazing Barbara (from Barbara Naso Photography) photographed my family while the incredible Kristin (from Kristin Watkins Photography) photographed Barbara photographing my family. It was a whole lot of fun and the results have gotten me thinking more about why I am obsessed with both having my family photographed and photographing other people’s families. Really, it has everything to do with being seen and seeing others.

Part 1: Being seen

A girl stands in a window behind a curtain

It’s just like any other weekend day. Maybe my kids get dressed, maybe they don’t. There are still meals to make and dishes to do. Most certainly my house is a mess. I’ve got three kids, so I’ve given up on caring about any conventional expectation for how things should look or be. It’s just us doing our regular thing. My oldest, an empath, has a lot of extra energy as she always does when she can sense there’s something a little different about the day. She senses Barbara’s energy so she’s a little more physical and a little more excitable. Barbara is there hanging out, watching us, talking with us, and sometimes hanging out creepily on a counter in the background. Lol. She quickly feels like a friend who is over for coffee and instantly wins over the kids and the dogs.

a photographer sits on a counter and photographs a mother doing the dishes
a photographer kneels on a chair and takes a picture of kids at the table making waffles
A photographer makes a face while looking at a girl's pretend phone as she pets a dog

The time goes by as it does with any other day. Sometimes things happen that feel special but often they do not. It’s not until I get the photos from Barbara that I can see what is special in the times that don’t feel special.

Life happens in real time and space and moves too quickly to think about the moments that take us from the past to the future in a fraction of a second.

At this point in my life, that movement of real time feels mostly like survival. Feed, clean, clothe (maybe), nap, snack, play, bed. Rinse. Repeat. It’s very easy to get stuck in the mundane routine without seeing or feeling the joy in it. It’s also very easy to get lost in the moments of frustration when the routine comes to a halt with challenging behaviors, spilled milk, sibling fights.

A toddler smiles as his mom squeezes lemon into a measuring cup
A girl measures flour while a woman gets ready to squeeze a lemon while holding a toddler
A mother puts silverware into a draw while two children look on from the background
a mother stands at the sink while steam from a waffle maker floats in front of her face
Siblings fight in their pajamas

But when we can press pause on the pummeling of moments that rapidly unfold, we can transcend real time. Within that fraction of a second pause the present is suspended forever in a photograph, and I get to see myself and my family in a way that is impossible to see in reality.

I get to exist. I become part of my family’s visual history.

How I am seen in the moment by Barbara is a welcome difference from how I often feel in real life. When I so often feel rushed, I am seen as a nurturer. When I so often feel distracted, I am seen as a giver of attention. When I so often feel like I spend my days nagging my kids, I am seen as playful. I am reminded that I am enough when I am seen.

a mother smiles and looks at her daughter who is on her lap and smiling and almost touching her face
toddler sleeps on mother's shoulder
A mother combs her fingers through her toddler's hair while he drinks a bottle and another child sits nearby
A mother and daughter make funny faces while a child perches on the mom's knee and a toddler and a dog watch
A mother holds her daughter on the couch while a father holds his daughter on the floor and a little boy takes a picture with a pretend camera

There’s nothing more thankless than the unseen labor of motherhood. Battles are won and lost within the walls of our home and most often there is no reward for not letting your toddler keep the pee filled diaper that he won’t let go of. No one is usually there to hold space for you keeping your shit together while your toddler tries so very hard to get the diaper out of the trash as he throws a tantrum on your dirty kitchen floor, a floor that says, “I’ll get to it at some point.”

I want to remember it all though. Dirty floor. Tantrums. That feeling when you make it through someone’s big feelings without losing control of your own feelings (which is much easier to do when someone is there photographing you by the way). But even if I had lost it, I would want to see that too, because it’s so often the way it goes, and the more we see that, the more support we can give each other and ourselves. This is the hardest work I’ve ever done. This is the most I’ve ever been challenged to grow as a person.

A mother pulls a diaper off a toddler as he walks away
a toddler fights to hold a dirty diaper that his mother is trying to take away
A toddler tries to get through his mother's legs
a toddler reaches up to the counter as his mom stands nearby
mother puts arm around toddler while he cries

So here we are in the most challenging season of family life we have experienced yet. 6 months of James pulling 12 hour days every day of the week and weekend, of me holding up all the childcare and housekeeping and bedtime duties while pregnant as a surrogate and balancing nannying and photography. 65 days of sharing our house with company from January through May while on a deadline to wrap up our basement renovation. Months of sickness after sickness.

We are a mess, but we are so okay. We have been stressed, but we are happy. We have been waiting for so long to get over this part of the year, but being seen in it is a gift to me and my family.

Thank you, Barbara, for seeing what I would never be able to see for myself during this time.

A toddler stands near a dirty toilet holding a bottle
A girl stands in a window behind a curtain and another girl smiles as she leans on a chair in front of the window
A girl drinks from a green floral teacup
A girl sits on a stool and holds a waffle in her lap while looking up and smiling
a mother helps a toddler wash their hands as an older child hides their face in her sweater behind them
Two children sit on their father who is lying down on the ground while another child balances while walking down his leg
A little boy holds a wooden toy camera to his face and pretends to take a picture

To see photos of the other families and read about their experience being photographed, follow the blog circle to Kristin’s page.

An afternoon at the Magic House, Atlanta family photographer

An extended family walks down the street swinging children from their arms

There’s something about extended family sessions that gets me so excited. I have photographed this crew several times now, and it’s my favorite way to close out the year. I love seeing the cousin relationships grow as the kids get older, and the adults keep me just as entertained as the kids. Cousin time was so important to my childhood, and I love hearing about how important it was to Tanya’s too. She articulates so well why it matters for her to have these memories captured for her children here. Thank you, Tanya, for being so generous with your words.

“We have been at the Magic House for just over two and a half years. In that time, we've celebrated all of Akira's birthdays, Anaïs' 5th and 6th birthdays, one of our wedding anniversaries and more than several handfuls of gatherings. But to me, what makes Magic House so magical is having our now annual New Year's tradition of having the Tampa Clarks visit and having Kaleen document a day of somewhat organized chaos.

I grew up in a big family with loads of cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and everyone in between. We would visit each other's houses all over the world (literally--Japan! The Philippines! Canada! The United States!) and no matter how small the home or how large the family, somehow, we always found ways to make physical space for one another. If it meant that kids would have to sleep with their parents, then that was what happened. If it meant that all the cousins were in sleeping bags in the communal living room, ok then. If it meant that siblings had to share a bed and room with others, well, that's what family is for.

These memories I have of my own upbringing are some of the best I have so it's only natural for me to want my own children to have those same experiences. Whenever we anticipate this visit, the air changes. There's an underlying excitement that explodes as soon as we see their car pull into our driveway and the kids spill out to greet each other. There's a comfort in seeing one of my best friends--who also happens to be my sister-in-law--jump out with hugs for everyone. And there's my brother-in-law who somehow manages to bring something to share whether it's homemade dough for fresh bread to be made, coffee, or even discarded/leftover liqueur that they don't even want to drink. There's also the familiarity between Jesse and James that hovers in the room. Brothers and confidantes who have literally known each other their whole lives, they share an unshakeable bond that gives me a sneak peek into the future dynamics between my own children.

Growing up, these family visits weren't extraordinary. What I mean is, there wasn't any one particular celebration or milestone to bring us all together. In my mind, these gatherings were just so normal and expected. They were what you did because we didn't live close to each other. It baffled me when I would hear friends in grade school talk about how they had cousins or an aunt who they didn't even know because they never visited them. I couldn't wrap my head around that idea because all of my extended family just seemed like my nuclear family. 

The difference this time around, though, is that we’re the parents now. We’re the ones who coordinate and plan and do the hard things. In those in-between spaces when we finally unite, the spaces we don’t notice that slip through cracks in the day, Kaleen is there to snap it up so that we have a tangible memory of something that would otherwise seem forgettable. With stealth and deliberate detail, she freezes all the wonder in the seemingly normal parts of time with a rapid click click click of her camera. It’s like she has an invisibility cloak when she enters our home. And the unnoticed are suddenly front and center, revealing that there is such a tangled web of complicated emotions and beauty in the every day.

With each passing year, my kids and my niece and nephews grow a little bit bigger and our hearts crack a little bit more. We see it in shifts in attitude with the older ones. We see it in the way they play. We hear it in the conversations they have and the jokes they tell. These extended sleepovers that include a lot of noise, makeshift toys, imagination and giggles also somehow preserve childhood enchantment and wonder. I now see more clearly why my own mother made it such a point to visit so many of her siblings when we were small. 

So I hope to keep it going. I hope Kaleen will continue to capture all of our feelings, our hopes, our amazement and our love that makes us a family through the lens of her camera.” 

A mat with the word home on it in front of a door that is decorated with a wreath with pumpkins on the ground on the sides of the door
the top of a door with the words Magic House written above the door frame
A mother places her arm around her son and lies her hand on his chest
A mother gently caresses the side of her daughter's head as she wakes from a nap
Two women prepare food at a kitchen island while a man reaches into a fridge behind them and another man walks towards them
A boy rides a cart down a driveway while his dad winces in the background as a piece of the cart falls off
A boy stands on a ledge in front of a fence looking down at the grass that matches his boots
A girl rides a cart down a driveway and laughs as she holds her feet out
A man comforts a child as another child swings and two boys climb on a playset
A man holds his daughters hand who is reaching out to hold her brother's hand as they cross the street
A boy bends over on a stump as another boy prepares to jump off another stump while a boy and a girl play behind them
A boy emerges from an underground tunnel
A child poses at a mural while her mom takes her picture with a phone
A boy puts his head through his dad's legs as two men stand nearby
A girl goes down a slide head first
A father and daughter play at an outdoor play kitchen
A little girl looks at another child as she mixes something at an outdoor play kitchen
A mother and father watch their boys slide down a slide and climb up the hill
A boy looses his boot at the bottom of the hill
Children play at a play kitchen as a dad holds a boy across his shoulders
A father comforts his son as two children and a man play at a play kitchen in the background
A boy lies on the ground and another child sits on a stump in the distance
A boy plays with his zipper as he sits on a painted stump
A girl slides down a slide as two boys jump across the slide in front of her
3 children play on and around a slide while their mother stands near them
a girl pokes her head into an underground tunnel
a scene of an extended family at an outdoor play area
A mother plants a kiss on her son's cheek as she embraces him
A mom embraces one son while her other son leap frogs over the top of a slide
a girl jumps from one stump to another
A mother watches as one son gets ready to enter a tunnel and another one exits the tunnel and her daughter gets ready to slide down the slide
A child pulls his hood over her face
an extended family walks down the street as a mom gives her child who is turned around the mom look
two children swing from the arms of their parents as they walk down the street
a mother pulls a boot off a child and lines it up with all the other boots
3 siblings take a bath and one child puts a pretend frog on another child's head
A girl lies in her parent's bed with her doll beside her
A mother watches at the doorway as a man sits on a toilet drinking out of a coffee cup as his children take a bath
a woman stands at her kitchen island looking off to the side
a child sits on the toilet and watches her brothers play in the bathtub
a boy shrugs his shoulders as his mother gestures for him to come
A mother holds her daughters arm and hands as she speaks with her
5 children sit on a bed in their pajamas watching tv

An afternoon at home with Stephanie and Haddie, Atlanta Family Photographer

a girl laughs as her mother catches her after a chase during a documentary family photography session

When Stephanie’s daughter lost her two front teeth, she knew it was a special fleeting time that she needed to have documented. During our session, she shared some of her thoughts with me around this milestone, and I asked if she would write them down so I could share them here. Stephanie and I had our daughters one month apart, and I’ve loved experiencing motherhood together with her from the first months of pregnancy. These words hit me hard as I know I will be looking at my own daughter’s toothless smile with bittersweetness sooner than I will be ready. Thanks so much for articulating this milestone so beautifully, Stephanie!

The In-Between

When I was pregnant, I worked hard to not spend the whole 40 weeks simply waiting for baby. I made a point to treat both the pregnancy and the birth as their own sacred entities, rather than a means to an end. Through that journey, I got to know, trust, and honor myself and my body in ways I never had before. In that vein of awareness, when labor began, I was able to recognize that my pregnancy was ending, and soon all of the feelings—both physical and emotional—of that journey would be gone with it. Somehow, I managed to have the same level of consciousness around the birthing process and, when my daughter was born, was able to—amid the chaos—take time to both greet the new life I’d helped create and hold reverent the work I’d just done. Taking those moments to notice the new feelings of an empty belly and life on the outside helped create a pause that forbade me from missing my transition into motherhood. The very moment I became a mother, I experienced a fundamental change in how I perceived and operated within the world. I needed time to process that change, and am grateful to have had the intuitive notion to take the time to do so, rather than simply barreling ahead into this new life.

As with my experience with pregnancy and birth, I have found some places to mark time and have closure along the parenting journey: when my daughter hit major milestones, when she weaned, when she started school…her first this or first that. But, there are so many other things, in between, that I haven’t been able to put a stamp on: when did she stop saying “mazagine” instead of “magazine” or “vecause” instead of “because”? When did she become capable of doing so many things I thought I’d be doing for her for who-knows-how-long? When did she begin to become big?

Logically, I know it’s been happening all along, but in the day-to-day, I don’t notice the little changes as they come, or realize I need to say goodbye to those pieces of her left behind in the wake of new developments. The growing child has no boundaries. We may be aware of when a new chapter has started, but we rarely know when the one before has ended. It’s not often that we get to put closure on the child who was before we start getting to know the child who is. And so, the moments that are full of joy and accomplishment are often equally full of grief and mourning as we bid farewell to our child as we knew them for such a finite amount of time, and welcome the new version in…and it goes on…this revolving door of childhood.

My daughter began 1st grade in August, and the last few months have brought a world of change. The philosophy of the school where my daughter attends imparts wisdom around a period called “The Six Year Change.” The idea highlights this age as a major transitional point that looks and feels like a prequel to adolescence: the body changes, the teeth change, attitudes change (for better and worse), and the baby within the child starts to disappear. I’ve been [mostly] enjoying the experience of my daughter’s growth over these months, but when her top two front teeth fell out last month, it struck me that it was time for me to prepare to bid farewell to my baby, and welcome my daughter as the whole, beautiful, brilliant, challenging human she is becoming. It occurred to me that we are in a time of in-between, and the window in her smile is a beautifully bittersweet reflection of this very thin window separating her early childhood from all that is to come. In that moment of realization, I felt a strong need to take some time to hold space around this moment in our lives, and give it a bit of closure…not for my daughter, but for me. Children don’t miss being babies, they long to be big, and it is my job as her mother to be able to let go so that I can support and revel in her bigness, just as I did in her littleness.

Thanks, Kaleen, for creating this time capsule for us. I will hold this moment close to my heart as I love on my big girl, and miss my baby.

-Stephanie Singletary

a young girl stands on her tippy toes to look at herself in the mirror to put on makeup while her mom is putting on makeup in the background
A young girl holds a makeup brush to her cheek and smiles with a toothless smile
Young girl stands on an indoor swing during documentary family photography session
A young girl walks on hardwood floors with tights not pulled on all the way during documentary family photography session
a young girl makes a funny face in the mirror as her mom combs her hair during a documentary family photography session
Several Barbies float in bathwater in a bathtub during a documentary family photography session
A mother puts her daughter's hair in pigtails during a documentary family photography session
A young girl sits on a swing in her house while her mom holds the swing and looks up at her during a documentary family photography session
A girl puts her hand against a wall to push she and her dog in a red swing during a documentary family photography session
a young girl lies on her mother's lap and closes her eyes during a documentary family photography session
A girl eats a snack and smiles up at her mom with a toothless smile during a documentary family photography session
a mother touches her smiling daughter's nose as they sit next to each other during a documentary family photography session
a young girl laughs while eating a snack and lying on a large dog bed during a documentary family photography session
a young girl lies back on her mother as they sit together on the ground as a small dog lounges on the couch behind them during a documentary family photography session
a young girl climbs a tree and looks back at her mother with a worried face during a documentary family photography session
a mother roars with hands out to her daughter who is facing her and laughing during a documentary family photography session
a young girl looks up at her mom as she pulls her shirt with her teeth during a documentary family photography session
a mother smiles as she watches her daughter on a swing during a documentary family photography session
a girl smiles with joy as she swings on a swing during a documentary family photography session
A mom whispers into her daughters ear while she is on a swing during a documentary family photography session
a girl laughs as her mom tags her during a game of chase during a documentary family photography session
A girl runs in on direction as her mother runs in another direction during a game of chase during a documentary family photography session