The "BIG" Family Project

This weekend will mark the start of the biggest personal project I have ever undertaken!

The image above of my family is to be first of many like it unlike it.

The Idea: I want a picture of the whole Latenser family. (mother's side)

The Concept: What if we could create a book of our family that included every one of my Grandpa's children, their children and their children's children. Moving past the ghastly unwieldiness of children's children's children, what if that book were more than a catalog of faces but instead an expression of individuality, non-conformism, unbridled fun and and the ubiquitous chaos that seems inherent in big families, or maybe that's just us? I have never been a fan of how large groups seem to necessitate conformism. So instead of facilitating the loss of individuality by forcing everyone into a single group, Barbara, the brains behind this operation, suggested photographing each family individually and in their own environment. I loved the idea, and thus The Big Family Project was born.

The Execution: To complete this project, big distances will have to covered, big families will have to be photographed, big coffee fueled brainstorming sessions completed and of course a big book will have to be printed to bring it all together.

So how Big exactly are we talking? Well the concept behind this shoot to to photograph every child, grand child, great grand child and in-laws individually as well as with their respective families. All told equals up to 18 families and about 70 people! With totally round trip distance traveled somewhere north of 10k miles.

So we've covered the big family part how bout big distances?

This family just couldn't stick to the KC area and makes things easy for us. Instead there are families and grandchildren spread all across the country and as far away as London. But we figured if we could hit Portland OR, San Francisco, Omaha Ne, and London we could successfully capture everyone in the family. All this travelling will necessitate multiple side projects as well...more on that later.

This Saturday: kicks off this project in earnest with a 4pm flight to Portland OR where the next two family shoots will happen. Just the concept of Portland has me giddy with all those, bridges, waterfalls and mountains. So be looking for updates to follow this post shortly as this project gets rolling.

Wrapping up:This project transcends simple family photography and is catapulted into the realm of social revolution, or would that be photographic revolution? Every person involved directly or indirectly in this project is a herald for freedom of expression and is assisting in breaking the shackles of oppressive and unwarranted group photography ;) So what you can take away from this is; conformism is bad, and individuality is good. Small diverse autonomous groups free to express themselves beat large awkward groups any day.

Speaking of small groups here are a few awesome families I had the pleasure of sharing an afternoon with this past season.