Family portraiture changes as families do.
Children arrive and grow. Siblings become adults. Parents become grandparents. Families expand, move away, come home, and gather again.
For more than twenty years, I have photographed families in my Johannesburg studio through those changes.
Sometimes everyone is in the frame. Sometimes the photograph is of two people whose relationship says something about the whole family. What matters is not creating a perfect version of family, but photographing the people who are there —
Together, as they are now.
There is something powerful about having everyone in one photograph.
Not because everyone is looking in the same direction or behaving beautifully. Often the photographs I care about most contain something much smaller: a hand on a shoulder, a child leaning into a parent, siblings falling naturally into positions they have occupied for years.
These are the photographs that establish a family at a particular point in time.
Who was there.
What they looked like.
How they belonged together.
A family portrait does not have to contain the whole family.
There are relationships within it that deserve photographs of their own: siblings, grandparents and grandchildren, parents with each child, and children photographed individually as they grow.
Some begin right at the start.
Some of the most valuable family photographs are the ones that could only have been made during a very particular window of time.
Grandparents with grandchildren. Adult children with their parents. Three or four generations together.
We tend to think there will always be another opportunity.
There isn't always.
A photograph cannot stop time, but it can keep one small piece of it.
Family photographs become more valuable with time.
The photograph itself does not change. We do.
A child grows. A grandparent ages. Someone moves overseas. And suddenly a photograph that once simply showed everyone together holds far more than we understood when it was made.
Time is what gives a portrait its value. We simply don't know it yet.
That is why I keep family portraits simple.
The people are what matter.
If you would like to know what happens before, during and after a family portrait session, you can read more about working with me.
JOHANNESBURG PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER
One Moment. One Portrait. Forever
© 2005–2026 Bridget Corke Photography
Blairgowrie · Johannesburg · South Africa
International Master's in Portrait Photography
One of only two in Africa.