Posted another lovely family over at The Mixed Race Project. Christine and Randy live in Seattle, WA and I had the pleasure of visiting them when we were there in August. I loved the hilltop view of the city from their Seattle home and it makes me impatient for the summer when we’ll go back like we do every year. Although I’m not sure how much longer I will continue working on this project, I do hope to feature a few more families this year. Thanks for all your encouragement and positive feedback over The Mixed Race Project over the last 18 months. It’s helped me keep the series going.

It’s been a while since I put up a new family on the Mixed Race Project, but I did indeed visit 2 families on our West Coast trip this year. In Portland, Oregon, I met Roxana and Dupre and their 2 adorable girls. They cooked a super delicious Sunday breakfast and we talked about Portland, New York, food and the NY Yankees (Dupre is a big fan). Thank you Roxana and Dupre for letting me into your home!

I don’t know why it takes so long to get a new Mixed Race Project feature up (no, scratch that…I do know why), but I’m excited to introduce Leslie & Hank’s family from Long Beach, California. I was particularly excited to have the opportunity to photograph a family with older kids while we were out in LA earlier this year and both Leslie and Hank were so thoughtful with their interview questions. I hope you enjoy their feature as much I had the pleasure of meeting them.

Every time I publish a new family, it gives me renewed energy for the project. I may not have the time to devote to it as I’d like and it may take forever to get a new family feature up, but going through the photos and reading through the written interviews gives it a renewed purpose and reminds me why I started the project in the first place. As we do every year, we’ll be out in the Pacific Northwest this August. If you live in Portland or Olympia (I think we have Seattle covered! I may still be looking for a Seattle family) and would be interested in participating in the Mixed Race Project, email me at info@themixedrace-project.com.

I’m excited to introduce the first family in this series that features parents who are also of mixed race. Both Margaret and Loren are half-Asian/ half Caucasian and they live in Queens, NY.

I think there is a point in any ongoing project where you start losing focus and you start having doubts. I’m not sure if I’ve reached that point quite yet, but I have been feeling it to some degree. What is this for? Who am I doing this project for? When will I know when it’s “done”?
 
It’s taken a lot of time and coordination to schedule and get each story done. It’s always a bit intimidating to enter into a stranger’s home and photograph them at some of their intimate family moments. I mean, it’s strange. But by the time I leave the photoshoot, I feel like I know them a little.
 
So I don’t know where this is going, if anywhere at all. I know I have more to learn and that is motivation in itself. I guess I’ll keep on going…

It’s been awhile since I uploaded a new family on The Mixed Race Project, but I’m excited to share a new family with you today. Annie & Michael live right here in Brooklyn, New York and are raising a 7 year old girl and a 3 year old boy. Annie is from Colombia and Michael is a born and bred New Yorker. Annie is a Pastry Chef who runs her own business called PicklePetunia Made and she’s been super nice enough to help out a few times in the kitchen when Mark has been slammed during the holidays.

The Mixed Race Project has been hard for me to keep up because scheduling shoots, interviewing the families and editing the photos have been a time management challenge, but I don’t want the project to slide. I’m looking for a few families to shoot when we’re out on the West Coast this year: LA, Portland and Seattle. If you would like to participate and we can coordinate timing, send me an email at info@themixedrace-project.com

A new family is up on the The Mixed Race Project.

I want to tell you about another reason why I was interested in doing this project – I wanted to document and photograph moms, families, dads and their homes just as they are. You know, “normal people”, not styled or staged in a way that make them appear unlike how they are in everyday life. In all of the photoshoots, I really did just drop in on these homes and start taking pictures. I gave loose instructions not to bother cleaning the house especially for the shoot or get dressed up in clothes that they wouldn’t normally wear on a weekend.

I know that at times we crave escapism and sometimes that manifests into leafing through highly stylized spreads of these beautifully designed homes that are inhabited by successful, stylish women and their equally stylish kids, however, to me that isn’t real. In reality, it’s a fantasy that many of us can’t attain or relate to. A cluttered kitchen with stuff on the counters is real. An unorganized pile of shoes. Moms in clothes that are believable on a Sunday morning, not in cocktail dresses or heels. Why do we not see more of these kinds of images? Why can we not celebrate the beauty in all families and homes? I hope that you too, can see the beauty in these families’ lives, as I discovered while photographing them.