Maida Vale family photography

We shot Charlotte and Calin’s wedding at Christmas 2018; they had a daughter the same age as us. Then Charlotte and I went on to both have baby boys, born ONE DAY APART… and our baby’s first name is their baby’s middle name (last winter was a good season for London babies named Nikolai, obviously). And then today I escaped our flat for my first proper walk in 15 weeks and shot their doorstep portraits and everything was brilliant. Except apparently not going on proper walks for 15 weeks destroys your legs – by the time I made it home I was staggering like I was ninety.

The goal was to document a moment – a very weird moment – in the life of their family. I've been thinking a lot about these moments recently, for better and for worse. On the one hand, my children are inescapable: we live in a one-bedroom flat, and almost never leave it. On the other hand, the plan is for us all to live very long lives, and relatively soon they won't want to sleep holding on to me anymore, and I'll go from lying awake with a crick in my neck to having a whole half the bed to myself and missing their tiny snores. Soon they'll be involved in their own little lives and won't want my input quite as much, and I'll have all the free time I've been craving to work and do yoga and embroider things and pee without an audience, and it'll be brilliant but bittersweet. They won't ever be this small again, so I take pictures to keep them miniature forever. And then I come to your house and do the same for you, too.