Pam Spaulding- An American Family

'Pam Spaulding started at the Louisville Courier-Journal & Times in 1972, a year after her internship at those newspapers. For over 30 years she has photographed one upper-middle class family as they raised three children and then as those children left home for lives of their own. All three of the children are now older than she was when she started this project. The family has never let her go. The book is called An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys.'

Pam Spaulding's photography has really intrigued me ever since I bought her photo book out the back of a book shop for 2 pounds. I was unaware of the photographer before I found this book but her photography resonates well with me, particularly with regard to this current project. I wanted to delve into family life and almost experience it for myself. Spaulding's project is known best for the fact that she practically lived with the family she photographed for the years that she lived with them. The children within the photography are now older than her but she spent her time photographing them grow until they were old enough to graduate and then continued. She got to see the milestones, the good times and the bad. Although I only had months to propose, travel and then develop on my project, Living with the family, even if only for a small amount of time, let me see their entire way of life. I made informed decisions based on how they lived whether or not what they did was fair on the children and whether it was an enjoyable and fulfilling way of living. However, I decided not to make this too bias within my project. I want the viewer to make their own mind up about this.