You Spend So Much Time Being Mum and Dad, It’s Easy to Forget There Was an Us
You spend so much time being Mum and Dad that sometimes it’s easy to forget there was an us before all of that.
Before the feeds and the nappies and the school runs and somebody always needing something from one of you.
There were just two people.
And that relationship is where this family began.
I think about this quite a lot when I’m photographing families. Because although I’m watching the children, I’m watching the parents too.
And there are these tiny things I notice.
A glance across the room.
A hand on a back.
The way one of you notices the other needs help before anything has been said.
The shared frustration when things are going slightly wrong. The reassurance. The gentleness. The consideration.
The unsaid stuff.
And if I’m completely truthful, seeing that between two parents probably moves me more than almost anything else I photograph.
Because when I see it, I know there’s a love story behind it.
I don’t know the whole story, obviously. I don’t know everything those two people have been through together or all the versions of themselves they’ve already been.
But I can see something.
And once I see it, I want to photograph it.
There are still two people underneath Mum and Dad
Having children changes you. It changes your relationship too.
You become Mum and Dad, and those versions of you can take up an enormous amount of space.
And of course they should. Raising children asks a lot of you.
But the people who existed before them are still there.
They’ve changed and morphed and they’ll continue to change. But every so often, while photographing a family, I’ll catch sight of them.
Not Mum looking at Dad.
Just her looking at him.
And I bloody love those moments.
Because you can’t manufacture them.
I can ask two people to stand next to each other. I can put somebody’s hand somewhere. I can create a photograph that looks romantic.
But I can’t manufacture the moment someone instinctively reaches for the person they love.
That’s different.
Your children are part of this story. But so are you.
We naturally think family photographs are for us.
Photographs of our babies when they were tiny. Their little hands. Their expressions. The way they fitted into our arms.
But one day those photographs belong to our children too.
And there’s something incredibly special about being able to look back and not only see what your parents looked like when you were small, but see how they were with each other.
To see tenderness.
To see affection.
To see that Dad noticed Mum. That Mum reached for Dad. That there was laughter between them, or reassurance, or a hand quietly resting on a shoulder.
And I think there’s something deeper in that too.
Our children are learning about relationships long before anybody sits down and explains relationships to them. They’re watching. They’re absorbing what love, care, affection and consideration look like between the people around them.
Not every child gets to grow up surrounded by a version of love that feels safe and gentle. So when I witness it, I think I’m particularly attuned to it.
Maybe that’s why it moves me so much.
And maybe there’s something quite powerful about a child having photographs that let them see it for themselves years later.
Not a perfect family. Not a performance of one.
Just evidence of the little ways their parents loved each other while they were busy raising them.
Children can make finding each other harder. Life can make it harder. You’re tired. You’re busy. You’re needed.
Sometimes the relationship that started everything can disappear underneath the sheer business of being a family.
But every now and then, I see it.
A look.
A touch.
A tiny act of care.
There you are.
And yes, I’m going to photograph it.
Because your children are a huge part of your family story.
But the two of you are part of it too.
Samantha Black is a family, newborn and maternity photographer in London, photographing families honestly, with a particular love for the small, unsaid moments that happen between people.
