Read an article I wrote for The Guardian about making the book here.

“Look at us! So loving, so happy, so normal.” That has been the basic message of family photography for decades. Today’s families may strike more informal poses than their Victorian counterparts and assemble their images on digital walls rather than in physical albums, but the domestic photograph is still, largely, a tool for self-promotion.

In researching our book, my co-author Stephen McLaren and I were looking for exceptions to this rule. We had no interest in assembling a collection of idyllic family portraits because real families are not often idyllic. They come together, but they also fall apart. They love and protect their different members, but they also reject and confine them. Families are containers for loyalty and cruelty, altruism and selfishness – in short, for all our best and worst characteristics.

We wanted to tackle the emotional rollercoaster of family life with the honesty it deserves, cutting through the glut of smiling snapshots and tightly choreographed nuclear units to show how that photography can be than a tool for advertising domestic bliss.