Awkward Family Photos - Mike Bender [0]
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Awkward family photos / Mike Bender and Doug Chernack—1st ed.
1. Families—Humor. 2. Families—Pictorial works.
3. Portrait photography—Humor.
I. Chernack, Doug. II. Title.
PN6231.F3.B46 2010
818′.602—dc22 2009050905
eISBN: 978-0-307-59228-6
Cover design by Daniel Rembert
Cover photograph courtesy of the Sparks family
v3.1
This book is dedicated to our own awkward families
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
1. The Family Portrait
2. Mom and Dad
3. The Kids
4. Siblings
5. Grandma and Grandpa
6. The Relatives
7. Pets
8. Vacation
9. Birthdays
10. Graduation
11. Weddings
12. Holidays
13. Strange, Not Awkward
Bonus Chapter
Conclusion
Contributors
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
amily. They’re the people we love, the people we trust and confide in, the people we identify with. But there’s something else about family that isn’t often spoken about, because, well, it’s not always comfortable to admit. So, let’s just put it out there—family is awkward. That’s right. When a group of people with the same name and different personalities are forced to spend most of their lives together, plenty of uncomfortable moments are sure to follow. And when a camera is there to capture one of those moments, an awkward family photo is born.
So, we set out to create a friendly place where people could suffer together and feel comfortable sharing their own odd family moments. We launched AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com in April 2009 with a handful of pics gathered from our families and friends. A friend who worked for a radio station in Providence, Rhode Island, offered to post our link on the station’s website. We thought we would get only a few hits, but when the link was picked up by radio stations all over the country, photographs of families straddling trees and piled on top of one another flooded in, with comments like “Thank you for showing me that my family isn’t the only one!” and “Oh, you think your family is awkward???” They were sent to us from teens, mothers, fathers, and grandparents. And they didn’t just come from the United States. There were submissions from Australia, England, Norway, Brazil, the Czech Republic, China, and all over the world. It quickly became clear to us that the awkward family was a universal phenomenon.
This book features popular photos and stories from the site, and also many never-before-seen ones. Ultimately, though, it is about much more than just photos and stories. It’s about celebrating the family experience and shining a light on all of those deliciously awkward moments that come with the price of membership: the road-trip sing-along, the meeting of the in-laws, having to take a cousin to the school dance.
There has been much debate on the website as to what constitutes a family photo. For us, it has always included everything from the classics (portraits, holidays, vacations, weddings, etc.) to those random pictures we probably have stuffed in a drawer or packed into shoeboxes in the attic (old school photos, family pet pictures, even the solo shot Mom made us take with our viola). As far as a perfect definition of awkwardness, we don’t know that it exists. Everyone can look at a picture and take away something different about what makes it awkward, but as long as the viewer feels some level of discomfort, there is awkwardness.
We want to acknowledge and thank the people who have made the awkwardness possible—the amazing families who so generously shared their photos with us. You let us into your homes and you did it with a sense of humor. Through your pictures, we see our own families and can take comfort that we’re in good company. It is our hope that this book will bring all our families