For a long time now I’ve been wondering if perhaps I’m just not a family photographer. I find almost no poetry in taking a family to a location they have never been to and photographing them in ways that speak very little about who they actually are. I find it downright boring as fuck. Even when the family is a joy to spend time with and the images turn out beautifully, my soul shrinks away from me a little bit more having added to the already overwhelming body of imagery that says nothing about reality and is purely for show. If we want to feel an image, like, really feel it, it has to speak the truth.
Just as I was ready to throw in the towel on family sessions, I woke up one morning and started shooting my kids as they wandered around our property, from when they opened their eyes in the morning to bathtime that night. Then edited the whole thing in black and white. I would love to tell you that the lightbulb moment blinked on with sunrise force, but it would take me another year before I would fully make the connection between what I had done that day in June to what was missing in my family sessions.
Family sessions always have the “kin”, but what they were missing for me was the “kith”.
Modern etymology often misunderstands Kith and Kin to be synonymous but they are not. Although Kith and Kin both refer to relationship and intimacy, each word speaks to unique kinds of relationships. Kin is an intimacy of persons – relations through blood, marriage, and/or love. Kith is an intimacy of place – our relationship to the land we live on, and the environments we make our home in. For Kith to play a central role in my family sessions means to focus on imagery that not only speaks to the connection between people but to their bond made more potent by their connection to place.
And so I’ve found a small piece of the artistic puzzle that makes family sessions more meaningful and enjoyable. My Kith&Kin sessions will be love stories between heart and earth, where familial love is acknowledged as a dance between people and their land. In-home family sessions truly have my heart, but Kith doesn’t necessarily have to be your house (although I will never say no to an in-home session). Kith can be any location that holds meaning and memories for you, but the most important aspect is that it must hold meaning. It could be the city block you walk every morning on your way to work, an ice cream shop you take your kids once a month on a Sunday, a beach you go to rest and relax just to hear the sound of the waves, the farmyard you live on with chickens and cows, your grandmother’s aged home that houses so many memories, the city apartment that you brought your first baby home to, or that sunlit field you go for evening walks with your dog. In art, emotion is felt in attention and intent, and so there must be a reason that we go to that field other than that it is pretty.
