Live the moment. The dishes can wait.
Genuine, Spontaneous, Playful, Curious
I create photos of families spending time together, letting go of the unrealistic Pinterest-perfect version of life and being in the moment together; spontaneous, playful and honest. I remember rainy afternoons spent with my mum in the kitchen, baking cakes and not caring about the clouds of flour that wafted around us. And sunny summer Sundays washing the car with my dad and turning the hose on him to initiate a family water fight.These are the honest moments where we all look most beautiful, engaged with the people we love, living in the moment and forgetting the rest. These are the moments I love to photograph.
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There’s cake mix on my bare thighs, flour on her shirt and we both occasionally dip our finger into the bowl for a taste test. We giggle like school girls because it always feels just a little naughty.
I remember her wavy blond hair, her pink cheeks, her easy smile, that loving look on her face whenever we exchanged a glance that said “isn’t this FUN!?” and most of all, I remember her hands. I used to love looking at them, hoping one day that the chubbiness of my own fingers would transform to be as long and lovely as hers. (They never did.)
She is so beautiful in a way that transcends any physical description I could write of her. It would miss her comforting smell, the sound of her laughter and the feel of her stolen kisses on my cheek. But that memory of us baking
cakes in our tiny little kitchen in England drops me right back into that moment and I can feel it all again as if it were yesterday. I only wish I had a photograph of moments like that.
My mother was too lost in the joy of working with me to care about whether raw egg was going to make us sick, or if my little hands were completely clean, or even about the flour which also made its way to the floor. How the cake turned out wasn’t the point and, as for the mess, she’d just clean it up later.
These are some of the strongest memories from my childhood. The ordinary tasks I shared with my mother, everyday things that she turned into an opportunity for us to play and connect. My mother taught me that mess you make in the process of having fun is simply the evidence of a life lived joyfully. A life in which you give yourself permission to let the unrealistic, Pinterest version of life go, in favor of putting the most important things in life first: the people you love and the ever-so precious time you have to spend with them.