Smile! The Nation's Family Album

-It's flashing.

-OK. Oh!

-Once upon a time, there was a family

and that family had a camera.

-Wow.

-They took snapshots to mark the rituals and milestones that shaped

-their lives.

-Even the word "snap", immediately,

it's not like a real photograph, you know,

it's kind of taken quickly,

it's often not composed perhaps very carefully.

But, nonetheless,

they have this really precious importance to the families

-that make them and share them.

-7,500 photographs.

From babies' first steps

to children growing up...

-THEY SING:

-# Happy birthday to you! #

CHEERING

..from romancing to wedding bells...

Who are those two strange people with hair and lovely looks?

Where have they gone to?

..happy holidays to our twilight years...

We put that photograph at his funeral, didn't we?

On his coffin, yeah, in the church.

..the humble family photo told a story about us all

as each generation of camera turned us into a nation of photographers.

We all had these cameras as teenage people.

Very simple. Point and shoot.

CAMERA CLICKS

Capturing our joys and pleasures, upsets and embarrassments.

It's about bringing pictures of different family members together

in a place and about marking that togetherness.

And now in the digital age, creating a new,

more instant portrait of our changing lives.

It's about evidence,

it's about preservation and it's also confirming our place within

-communities.

-One, two, three.

Boom! Well done.

When photography was first introduced in the mid-19th century,

the family photo was a middle-class luxury,

a formal affair in a professional studio.

For the first 50 or so years that photography was in existence,

it was a complicated, expensive,

difficult business that really only professionals or the wealthy

could pursue.

Long before today's carefree snapshot,

the Victorian portrait was an important document,

proof of your place in society.

The portrait era is all about identity.

It's posing, it's portraying,

it's deliberately fabricating, if you like,

the way you want other people to see you.

But in 1902,

George Eastman's Kodak company invented a cheap camera that took

photography out the studio and into the hands of ordinary families.

George Eastman realised that there was a huge market out there,

people who wanted to take their own photographs if they were given

the right equipment to allow them to do so.

Through their advertising,

Kodak also encouraged us to reimagine our lives.

Having a camera and taking a good picture was suddenly a passport

-to a new way of life.

-"All outdoors invites your Kodak."

Or even, "Snapshots don't grow old."

"Photograph your children

"and then they will always be young in your photographs."

So, very powerful, emotional signals that people responded to,

rather than, "Buy our cameras."

"Don't buy our cameras, buy your memories."

And those cherished memories start with the first baby pictures.

Mum-of-four Joanne Jacobs started her family photo obsession

with daughter Rebecca's baby album 22 years ago.

Well, this is your baby album.

And as you were the first, you got a really special one.

White, with your date of birth and...

Oh, I'm going for it there.

Now, that is what I call a real screaming photo

and I've got that resigned look on my face.

You know, I'm smiling anyway.

You showed me this photo when I turned 18.

Yes, I loved that.

That was in the back garden of our little house.

Oh, I love this picture.

That was at a wedding, wasn't it?

Yes. I think you were about three months old there.

And it was the first time you had to wear a dress and it's all up around

your shoulders. I remember that really clearly.

And you screamed a lot through the ceremony,

so I had to keep coming in and out.

That's your first birthday.

Oh, cute balloon!

I love your outfit.

I hate it. Are those knickerbockers?

No! It's a jumpsuit.

I liked it anyway.

A whole year of your life.

I'm really touched that you made and this extra effort from me

and not for the rest of them.

Women tend to be the curators

or the archivists of the family photo collection.

There is something going on there that makes women want

to make these narratives,

these spectacles of their family's history

and records of their children's growth,

and I think that suggests that, you know,

there is something valuable in the family photo collection for women.

Traditionally, mastery of the new technology was Dad's domain,

while Mum put the family album together.

But one dad, more enthusiastic than most,

has taken control of both camera and album.

In total,

there are...

..7,500 photographs.

In Harrogate, Ian McLeod has been taking pictures of his son

since the day he was born.

Corey's daily photos are the top two shelves.

Erm... Number 24, let's try?

Erm...

Having your first child

is something of a momentous occasion, I would say,

and I just thought it might be a good idea to take one

every day of his life.

Right, we'll go for the last album, which is number 71.

To begin with, I thought maybe I'd be able to do it for two years,

something like that. But when the two years were up,

I couldn't imagine myself giving it up, so it continued.

Number one.

He came into this world on Friday 13th September, 1991.

And he must be about five minutes old in this photograph.

Before he'd even been cleaned up.

And...

..here he's playing an invisible saxophone...

..so he was obviously into his music at a very early stage.

Three days old.

There is a mischievous looking expression.

At this stage, I hadn't really decided

how I was going to take the photos, but then

I thought the best thing is close-up portrait photographs.

That looks like he should have a fag in his hand there.

"Did I ever tell you the one about me dad taking me photo every day?"

The one thing that constantly changes in a family is the children.

The transition of a human being from a baby through to toddler,

to going to school, to becoming an adult.

Since they got their hands on their own personal cameras,

parents have tirelessly documented their young children's lives.

After all the baby snaps,

the proudest picture in the album

would often be the first day at school.

Perhaps one of my favourite photographs from my childhood

wasn't taken by my father, it was actually taken by my mother.

I was dressed up in my brand-new grammar school uniform

and she got me to stand on the back doorstep

so she could take a photograph of me,

but unfortunately she managed to cut my head off, and what she said was,

"At the end of the day, I wanted to capture your new uniform

"and the uniform's come out great."

Embarrassing pictures in school uniform were just one of the rites

of passage the family album was there to document.

From 1900 to the 1960s,

almost all of our family photos were taken on a variation of Kodak's

relatively affordable and easy to use box Brownie.

The Brownie really transformed photography

into a popular pastime.

The Brownie sold for just five shillings.

Five shillings was cheap enough for practically every family to buy

their own camera and make their own photographic record of their lives,

their achievements, their holidays and so on.

I used to love seeing this when I used to...

Our love affair with photos began with the Brownie.

Geoffrey Jenkins still has the model he bought in 1944.

The film was on the inside.

-I've saved it.

-Aww.

Geoffrey took many pictures with his box Brownie camera,

but his primary subject was his family, and daughter Linda.

This is the album that you made for me when I was little.

She liked posing, you know?

THEY CHUCKLE

I think I was told to do it more than anything.

-But I enjoyed it.

-Yeah.

Yeah. So, it became a way of life, didn't it, really?

-That's right.

-Yeah.

-Christmas.

-Christmas '64.

-Yeah.

-Butlin's, Bognor.

-Yeah, Butlin's.

-Butlin's, Bognor.

Camber Sands.

That was beautiful there.

That's Brighton again.

We went there a lot then, yeah!

I won a prize on that.

Oh, yeah.

-Yeah.

-I can remember you taking that photo, yeah.

And you said to me you was going to enter it in a competition.

-That's right, yeah.

-Yeah.

Geoffrey was a keen amateur,

and from the 1950s to the 1970s was a member of the local camera club.

It was an experiment in light.

It was, erm, technical stuff.

It was. I remember you saying to me,

"You've got to sit really still," because you wasn't using a flash.

-But...

-And I was terrified I was going to move.

Here's Dad with his camera, going...

Yeah.

Yeah.

MUSIC: Magic Moments by Perry Como

Whether they were enthusiastic hobbyists like Geoffrey,

dark-room dabblers or casual family snappers,

now everyone could have a go,

as the Brownie democratised photography

and gave birth to what we know as the snapshot.

# Magic

# Moments... #

A snapshot is a photograph which is made without any commercial

or artistic artifice.

It's someone just trying to create a personal record.

# The way that we hugged to try to keep warm... #

Typically, snapshots are thought to be rather badly framed and composed,

but I think that's to miss the point of what a snapshot is.

I think a snapshot

is a moment in time.

If it's triggering that memory of the actual event,

it's doing its job -

not as a beautiful piece of art, but as a snapshot.

In the '50s and '60s,

British families enjoyed more and more leisure time together.

Many now owned cameras, too,

but films were expensive and had to last,

so photos were kept for holidays and special occasions.

Lovely times.

Jenny Bowden now lives in Devon,

but remembers her childhood through the family holiday snapshots

taken in the north of England.

Because we lived in the Midlands, there used to be the...

the wakes week, where all, everything closed for...

I mean, my dad was a factory worker,

so the whole workforce went on holiday together.

So here I am, aged about two, and my sister...

..and my mum, and my dad.

And so there is me,

my mum and my sister.

It looks like I was a cheeky little thing.

SHE CHUCKLES

We never went abroad.

I mean, you didn't in those days.

There was just the family car in those days.

The father would drive it.

My mother never learned to drive.

It never occurred to her to learn to drive.

My sister never learned to drive.

So at weekends and holidays it was this vehicle that would take you

wherever you wanted to go.

Happy days. Yeah, happy days.

The best conditions were, perhaps,

a sunny day at the seaside, lots of light, not much movement,

so those photographs have really reinforced the impression we get

that in people's family albums the sun is always shining,

because that was the time in which you could take the best photographs.

So, it wasn't for nothing

that we were told to take pictures on holiday.

But, for some, the pictures on their walls and in their albums

had a more important purpose.

In the 1950s and '60s,

with the arrival of immigrants from the Caribbean,

photographs were often valuable proof that families

were making a new life for themselves.

Devon Thomas moved from Jamaica to London with his mother in 1956,

when he was just seven years old.

We moved up here to Brixton in 1959,

just around the corner here.

It became our family home, so after you'd been there for a while,

the people here before you would help you to get a job.

You'd save up and then you'd go through the process

and get a house of your own.

We've got... My father was a lodge man.

He was a Mason,

and it was a way of having a structure

where they'd have position and have status, you know?

And there, there's pictures of my mother.

This is her in her regalia,

as part of her lodge.

They were very proud of being in their organisation

and going to their functions, you know?

And this was a tradition from back home.

They didn't invent it when they came here.

They brought it with them from home.

People would commission photographers

to take photographs of them in their...

when you were well-dressed or in your uniform.

You see pictures here of my cousin.

She was a nurse and once you'd gotten your uniform,

you would take a photo to send home to show people

you had started on a new career and you were doing well.

At that point in the 1950s, '60s,

it was quite a tradition of dressing up

and going to the local high-street photography studio

and presenting a very successful image to the camera,

and then sending that photograph back to family members,

perhaps to reassure them that you were doing OK in this...

in this place halfway across the world that you'd travelled to

to start a new life.

People couldn't afford to go home very regularly in those days,

so photographs and letters were the only things

that people had to remind them to keep in touch with people at home.

I mean, I've been home since,

and you're proudly displayed on people's walls, as, you know,

as people "in England, gone a foreign".

Whether it was the move to another country, a new job,

or the sound of wedding bells,

our family albums proudly displayed our changing status,

and they tended to celebrate the happy moments.

John and Sandra Dobson in Sussex

have recorded theirs since the day they met.

Can you possibly remember that, Sandra, 51 years ago?

You can remember it, though, can't you?

You can, but who are those two strange people

with hair and lovely looks

and charming features?

-Where have they gone to?

-I don't know, but you've written,

"A solemn moment, John and Sandra signing the register,

"3pm, Saturday June 19th, 1965."

Yeah, yeah. And every year I say, "When's our wedding day?"

-And she doesn't remember.

-Yes, I do.

John Dobson's pride and joy is his quite remarkable photo collection.

He's made it his life's work to document his family.

Well, I have 216 full-sized photograph albums

with 20,000 photos,

66 years of photos.

Every photo in the whole lot has got the date on it,

and what I've written on there.

A bit like a diary of, erm,

our start and our journey through

-our lives together, aren't they, really?

-Yeah.

John and Sandra met on a blind date under Eastbourne clock tower.

If you look at that photo of her, there, she always,

for the first few years, had a bee...

beehive hairstyle, which I always used to like.

18 years old - look at that lovely figure.

I mean, I couldn't believe it, that such a gorgeous person would arrive.

I only hope I measured up a bit.

Well, you were pretty handsome.

19, there. I was a bit tasty.

I can understand you grabbing me.

That's one of my all-time favourite photos.

That is a nice photo. It was a happy day, wasn't it, really?

And we're young, and you're carefree, aren't you?

That was a few weeks later,

and by then you're feeling the water and thinking,

"I wonder if she likes me."

Like him she did,

and soon, younger Dobsons in a family home

made their first of many appearances in John's albums.

That is about my top five favourite photographs out of 20,000.

I love that one. And there is Melanie holding a little brolly.

-It's snowing.

-Melanie, two years, nine months, Joanne, six months.

Lovely photos.

They're brilliant. Sum up our life, really.

-It's...

-Yeah. Probably important to you, as well,

because you'd never had a home, really, had you?

Here's my mother, who, sadly, she was an alcoholic.

You couldn't say I knew her very well,

cos I left to go in the home when I was seven.

When John's alcoholic parents couldn't cope,

their children were taken into care by the authorities.

I've got a sister and three brothers in that photo -

five of us went in the home together.

Look at how happy I am there.

It doesn't seem a terrible place to be in,

but I wasn't with my parents, but there it is, in black and white.

Often I think about it or wonder if it actually happened, but it did.

Family albums present a very selective vision of family life,

so they're always holidays, you know, happy days, happy occasions.

So, in that sense, I don't think they're lies exactly.

I think they're actually quite carefully constructed stories.

You know, even when things are not going particularly well,

I think photographs are very powerful ways

to enact that desire for... for a happy life.

My favourite thing to say to people is,

I would willingly do the first 22 again that weren't up to much,

so I could have the 50 with Sandra.

You want that in writing?

In the '60s and '70s,

a second wave of immigrants arrived from the Commonwealth,

and for many families the changing experiences of each generation

has been documented in photos.

Aww! Who are they?

Is that their first Eid or is it the second?

-No, that was their second.

-That was their second Eid, yeah.

That's a... That's a beautiful picture. That's a beautiful picture.

The Bahksh family now live in Glasgow,

but when they first came to Scotland,

they settled 100 miles further north in Fort William.

Youngest son Navid wants to know what it was like settling the family

into the Highland town.

-Who's this?

-This is Sophia, and there was a young woman -

when she got married, she wanted Sophia to be a flower girl.

-That's over here.

-And that's there.

That shows how much there was integration with the local people.

Local community, yeah.

And the local community really liked my children.

You don't see that these days,

Asian families, their kids getting involved with the white weddings,

so this is totally news to me that this happened then.

This is our shop, isn't it?

Yes, this is the shop where I used to work.

I think he bought the shop for me.

-Oh, did he?

-Because I was fed up in the house and...

-OK.

-..I think he decided that I, because I can alter things,

I can sew things, so that's his...

-Yeah, it was his idea.

-That's his...

It was his idea, you know.

So I started working in the shop, and it was really enjoyable,

because I used to meet people, and I could communicate with them,

and I learned their taste...

-In fashion.

-Their fashions.

And I started working in the shop, so I have got to be fashionable.

-Active woman.

-Very active.

Very... I never got tired.

-Look at that, Mum.

-That's another...

Pretty one.

If Kodak brought snapshots to many ordinary British families...

..in 1963, their latest model, the Instamatic,

became the camera of the new youthful revolution.

We all had these cameras as teenage people.

Yeah, very simple, point and shoot.

CAMERA CLICKS

And, yeah, it took a cartridge.

Little cartridge film, which used to go in there,

so there was no danger of, erm, anything being exposed.

And just...

MUSIC: My Generation by The Who

Like many teenagers coming of age in the 1960s,

Jenny Bowden had her own cheap and easy-to-use Instamatic.

Jenny and her friends were also part

of the new British youth music scene, the mods,

and wherever they went, their modern cameras went with them.

We'd set off and hitchhike to Torquay, a load of us girls,

and of course, it was just the place to be.

We all thought we looked super cool.

Jenny's generation enjoyed new-found freedoms

that her parents would never have dreamed of,

and now they had the means to record their fun.

All the boys had Lambrettas, of course -

that was THE scooter to have...

..and they wore parkas.

And quite often, I mean, we used to go down there and we had...

We didn't have the faintest idea where we were going to stay,

but we'd meet somebody who had a caravan,

and we'd all go back and sleep on the floor.

And, I mean, you just wanted to work Monday to Friday and then go out

and have a good time.

And that was our life, really.

SHE LAUGHS

-ADVERT:

-It's new. It's now.

The hot new camera came with colour film, too.

Four full-power flashes in one tiny cube.

Flash cube.

The Instamatic with added flash meant photos day or night,

outside or in.

It had a little flash cube that would sit on the top of there,

with four, and as you took a flash photo,

it would automatically turn around until all four were burnt.

Pop it on.

And a world of colour opened up for Jenny,

as she did something else her parents' generation

would never have dreamt of, and went on holiday abroad.

We all used to carry it everywhere with us.

These were the girls I went with.

This was just strolling the seafront, dressed fashionably,

as we were at the time.

This was us working as chambermaids in...

in the Hotel Europe, it was.

We were just desperate each night to get our work done

and just go out on the town.

It takes me back to being there.

We were so fashion-conscious.

To be honest, I think we were slaves to fashion.

And then at the end of August 15th, 1969,

I met my husband, John.

The Instamatic would dominate for decades, spawn many imitators,

and become Kodak's most successful camera ever.

These affordable automatic cameras with flash

had brought the snapshot indoors.

So you could take photographs of birthday parties indoors -

people blowing out the candles.

You could take photographs of the children around the Christmas tree

opening their presents indoors.

The time in which you could take amateur photographs and snapshots

was extended and that revolutionised the sort of photographs

you see in family albums.

While our photographs mostly documented holidays

and celebrations,

some families had more fun at work than most,

and had their cameras on hand to catch it.

Grandad, he... He, erm, created this album.

In the mid-'70s, the Slight family went into the pub trade,

headed by Mark's late grandad,

the far-from-slight East End bodybuilder-turned-landlord, Ron.

Oh, there he is. Look at that.

There we go. A great Greek god there, Nan.

That's what you fell in love with.

Most probably.

This one is Mark

when he was a day old.

My dad had come up to visit him.

He was the first grandchild.

You can see the...

by the fashion, with the moustache and the sideburns.

Yeah, you can tell that's the '70s, can't you? '70s.

1979. This is the pavilion, isn't it?

Yes, and that would have been our silver wedding anniversary.

-Yeah?

-With the snake lady, yes.

What they do with snakes, I don't know.

For decades, owning your own home had remained an unattainable dream

for many, but the family managed to buy their own council house in 1983.

We were so thrilled to bits that we'd bought this house,

the first thing we did was build a drive,

so my husband crazy-paved the front garden

so we could bring our cars up.

This was one of his cars, the Triumph Vitesse,

what he always wanted,

and there it is there with me on it.

I'll bet the old man had to check it to make sure it wasn't dented on

-the bonnet or anything like that.

-She weren't all that big then.

I had a Raleigh Burner, which was wicked.

We bought stunt nuts and put the stunt nuts...

-Yeah.

-It's another thing, Nan.

-I'll explain it to you later.

From the latest bike Mark got for his birthday

to Glenda's Ford Cortina,

we used photos to revel in our changing status

and show off our consumer goods with pride.

Now, come on, smile, everybody, please, smile.

Waste of time if you haven't taken a light reading.

No, it's all right. This is completely automatic.

Cameras were, of course, desirable goods themselves

and with an ever-expanding market in the 1970s and '80s,

the competition was fierce.

-It's the lens.

-No problem.

It's a Zuiko lens. They use it on the Olympus OM1,

one of the best cameras in the world.

Well, I suppose they're all right for you boys.

Having the right camera was a bit like male jewellery,

so if you had the...

the Canon or the Nikon camera round your neck,

with the strap emblazoned with the brand name, then that showed

that you were not just an amateur photographer, you had aspirations.

-Do you know who that is?

-Who?

David Bailey.

David Bailey? Who's he?

-VOICEOVER:

-The Olympus Trip - so simple, anyone can use it.

And you have the beautiful SLR camera, which you took as well,

and the strap. And he used to do, like,

put it around his neck and then pretend to drop the camera, like,

make everybody laugh in the picture.

Everyone else thought it was hilarious.

600th time, you were like...

I'll tell you something, though, these girls haven't mentioned.

Now we've got Facebook, what do we do?

We go through them and have lovely snaps of everything in there.

-We do.

-So it paid off in the end.

Stop moaning. She's always saying, "We have to pose."

MUSIC: Daddy Cool by Boney M

For 13 years,

John Dobson entered the local Polegate Carnival

costume competition and roped his family in for a laugh.

You did the Polegate Carnival every year,

and it was really big, actually. It was like Mardi Gras, wasn't it?

Dad used to spend six months making amazing pieces of artwork

-and engineering.

-A bit of a local legend,

John was renowned for his inventive outfits.

That one, obviously Dad had some pipe dream about a crocodile.

It needed four people, and there we are in there, me and Melanie, look,

under sufferance, in the middle, as teenagers.

-When we were teenagers, we didn't like it much, and we...

-No.

Yeah, there's a lot of pictures of us looking daggers at the camera.

-Like that.

-But now we make our kids, erm,

line up and have pictures taken.

# I have a picture

# Pinned to my wall... #

That picture is me, Melanie and Kerry in 1984, was it?

Our first concert, the Brighton thing, to see the Thompson Twins,

and Melanie had to come with us.

She was the chaperone, aged 15, to go from Polegate to Brighton,

25 miles on the train.

# Whoa, warm my heart... #

Well, you know, generally speaking, you can have troubles,

the terrible teens and all that, but they were brilliant.

There was no point rebelling,

because if your dad's worn a moulded-breast-cup swimming costume

in the pool, and roller-skated down Polegate High Street,

what's the point?

THEY LAUGH

# Warm my heart... #

With everybody taking snapshots and people hungrier

for quick access to their prints,

a rival company brought out a revolutionary new camera,

with a unique selling point.

-ADVERT:

-That's it. Just press the button.

There you are, in 90 seconds.

Razor-sharp image and bright, lasting colours.

In 1948, Polaroid invented the instant camera,

but it wasn't until the 1970s

that the Polaroid could eject the print as it developed,

and the wider public took it up.

When Polaroids came out, I got one,

and this is a Polaroid of my mum when she was a bit older,

in her front room with her floral wallpaper, having a cup of tea.

That's Mark with his father.

-That's me.

-And that was when he was five days old.

And this was on a Polaroid, when they first came out,

the Polaroid cameras, you just used to click them, didn't you,

-and they came out?

-Mmm.

That was a new thing in them days.

Marvellous.

If you were at a party, for instance,

you could take a photograph and then hand it around

and show people at the time, so it became part of the fun.

RAUNCHY RAGTIME MUSIC

Away from the prying eyes of the developer,

people dared to take naughty pictures,

as the Polaroid liberated people to capture more risque subject matter

that had previously remained private.

With the advent of cheap and plentiful flights to Europe,

more and more of us took package holidays in the 1980s.

As a 20-something working in advertising,

Joanne Jacobs enjoyed holidays in the sun with her friends,

and always packed her camera in her suitcase.

We were lucky in that we were the generation that were told,

"You don't have to get married young, so you can go out there,

"you can have fun, you can party, you can be irresponsible."

You could just all go to Majorca or Spain.

Those were our favourite places. Corfu, as well.

And I think I remember having a little Vivitar camera

that I took everywhere with me,

and I was always snapping, and I was always saying,

"Come on, guys, we'll be glad if we take this photo, if we do it now."

And they would go, "No, no..." "Come on, let's do it,

"because you'll be glad after to have a memory from it."

And I did used to enjoy waiting for my photos to come back.

My issues used to be,

you'd take loads of photos

and then probably only get about two that were good.

Snapshots were now part of the leisure experience,

proof we really were having a good time.

By the 1980s,

photography had become even more popular in British households,

but before we got those holiday snaps

and cheeky party pictures back, we had to wait.

These were the glory years for film processing,

their labs working round the clock to keep up.

Brian Holbrook has worked in the same high-street developing shop

in Didsbury, Manchester, for 45 years.

Mid-'80s, that was when everything really took off.

Instead of people taking one roll of film on their holidays,

there'd be about ten or 15, and that,

coupled with the fact that more people were going abroad,

so they would take more pictures anyway,

accounted for the fact that we were busy.

That was the boom period, I would say, and at five o'clock,

all the doorways would be full of people

who would pick their films up,

and they were all laughing and giggling and joking

with what they'd just picked up.

Customers would tell me that, "It's crazy out there."

The 1980s was a heyday for photographic processing,

with people sending off their film to companies like Sunny Snaps

and Truprint, waiting for the envelope to come back,

and tearing the envelope open

just to see what they'd managed to capture.

The idea that the photograph was quite a precious thing,

it actually cost money to take a photo,

which people have forgotten nowadays.

The 24 or the 36 exposures forced you to think carefully

about the photos you took.

We may have had more money in our pockets,

but there was a limit to how many rolls of films

people could afford to buy and develop.

It's funny seeing all the outfits and, like, remembering.

But in 1991,

the Boorman family were selected by the Daily Telegraph to take part

in a unique photographic experiment

that anticipated the freedom of digital cameras,

years before it would transform family photos.

Instead of just taking photographs on high days and holidays,

we would take photographs of us going to Sainsbury's.

The supermarket...

We took photographs of the contents of our fridge.

We took photographs of meals that the children had eaten.

There's pictures of Nick at the dentist.

Each of the five members of the Boorman family got a camera,

and as many films as they wanted, to capture their own snaps of the year.

Astrid was just eight when they started the project.

I mainly took photographs of my friends,

my toys especially as well.

It was nice to capture things that were important to me.

Lots of my brothers out and about.

Nick, in particular, enjoyed taking more unusual...

Yeah, Dad did like more arty shots.

And I took the more conventional photographs.

I was more interested in them being well-framed and...

I think just a hangover from not having much film -

you had to be careful to get a good photo for the shot.

While Mum and Dad started out with different styles,

the project gave both parents the chance

to develop their photographic eye.

I took this one, and it is one of my favourites.

-It's brilliant.

-Because he's so happy.

And he's flying.

I was lying on the bed, and Maxwell was being thrown onto the bed,

shrieking with pleasure, his arms and legs out,

and then screaming to be picked up, to repeat the whole thing again.

I just think it's a happy photograph,

and not the kind of image you'd normally take, but it's family life.

And I think, genuinely,

my favourite photographs are pictures

of the three of them together,

-like a little tribe.

-Over the year,

Terry found the freedom to experiment

with her unposed snapshot style,

and took some of the family's most treasured pictures.

What I'm doing is I'm just diving into the pool, jumping in,

just having fun messing around,

and my mum's managed to capture a bird's-eye shot

of me jumping into the swimming pool.

I just look like I'm really free and carefree.

-I did want...

-Having fun.

I did want the shot. I knew what I wanted,

and it took me at least a roll.

It was only the freedom of having unlimited film

that enabled me to take it.

I was determined that I would get a good one, and I did.

Well, I think I did.

The Boormans' photographic experiment

was an unforgettable experience that brought the family together.

You realise what a strong family unit we are,

looking back at the pictures and thinking, "Well,

"there's five of us and no-one looks angry."

They are all happy, nice shots.

You can see, like, we're all having a good time.

15 months and 16,000 photos later,

some of the family's pictures were published

in the Sunday Telegraph Magazine.

These photographs were a period of my life

when my children were growing up.

They were happy times, and you've got it documented.

Why do we take photographs?

What is the role of photographs in the album?

The memories are still there, but sometimes you need a trigger

in order to bring that memory, in the way that taste or smell...

Just seeing a photograph, in a sense, can conjure up all of those,

and suddenly you're back as a child, opening your Christmas presents,

or you're on a beach making a sandcastle.

-You can almost...

-HE INHALES

..smell the salt.

You can feel the sand between your toes,

just by looking at the photograph.

That's how powerful they are.

Back in Southfields,

Joanne Jacobs is dedicated to a lifelong photo project - her family.

That's obviously just after you were born

and that's the moving house photo

that we all love, with the blue beret.

Yeah, I really like that one.

I like to mark occasions, so, for my children's 18th birthdays,

it's become a custom now that I make them, as a special present,

a large photo collage of their life.

It means going back through the photos and choosing them,

and then I tear them and I do it in the order of their life.

As I pass in the corridor and I look at this,

there are things I notice that I haven't noticed before each time,

and it makes me so happy, because...

..you see this and you... The scenes just come back to you,

and happy memories and things that you would have forgotten if they

weren't in front of you.

When you look at the way photographs are displayed,

they tend to be more in, kind of, shared, familial spaces

in the house, like living rooms and hallways,

or fridge doors with lots of photos on them, you know,

pinned there under fridge magnets.

It's about bringing pictures of different family members together

in a place, and about kind of marking that togetherness.

Joanne represents all members of the family in her collages,

including youngest daughter Rachel.

I really like this one, where I was rock climbing,

and I was the only one who got right to the top,

but I was one of the smallest, so it felt really good.

Yeah. I like you in the helmet, as well.

-Yeah, because the helmet was so big compared to my tiny head.

-Yeah!

Creating family photo displays are a way of really asserting

a happy family and a successful family,

and for mums who have done a lot of work to achieve those things,

I think also, they are invested very much

in creating these visual records

of that kind of success.

-ALL:

-Hi!

-Come in, come in!

Happy birthday!

Photo fanatic Joanne has invited her extended family round to celebrate

her youngest niece's second birthday.

-THEY SING:

-# Happy birthday, dear Babette

# Happy birthday to you. #

-ALL:

-Yay!

While they are round, Joanne's getting the family

to restage a group photo,

and has asked her niece Maria to get behind the camera.

Is it flashing?

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICK

Wow. That was a lot of flashes.

Maria took the original photo,

but today there is one person missing from the group -

her father Shaun passed away three years ago.

My dad was the photographer in the family and he was always, kind of,

taking pictures of everything.

In the last two days he was with us,

he had his hospital bed in the dining room,

and the camera was still right next to his bed,

and he started to use his camera as kind of a diary, I think.

But just after he died, we kind of thought, like,

we've got this last memory card

of all the things that he wanted to take pictures of.

I just wanted to have the pictures printed somewhere,

so we've got the car, the house, a guy up a tree...

This is, I think,

a side-effect of some of the treatment that he was having.

It had a bit of an effect on his feet,

so I think there's a lot of those.

This is actually him looking at my photography.

I was showing him the pictures that I'd taken,

and I took the camera off him and took this one,

and it was just, like, spending time in the garden.

We don't just need to remember, like,

the days where everything was perfect.

People do get sick sometimes, and if we don't see pictures of it,

it's quite shocking when it happens

and we don't really know how to deal with it, but...

And then if we don't hide them, I think it...

It gets people talking about it,

and we can kind of relate to each other a bit better.

When maybe, you know, you're losing someone you love really dearly,

it makes a huge difference emotionally

to be able to go to a family album

and look back at some of the lovely times that you have actually managed

to share together, you know, maybe despite present difficulties.

And that's why I think family photos

are these massively important objects. Erm, partic...

I think particularly the printed ones that you can hold and gaze on,

touch... I think they help hold us together,

and they help hold families together.

So this photograph here was Nan and Grandad's...

-50th.

-..50th anniversary, wasn't it?

And we had a big party over in the village hall.

-That's right.

-We put that photograph at his funeral, didn't we?

On his coffin, yeah, in the church.

Yeah, and it's a great photograph of Grandad, isn't it?

Sort of... It, sort of, just portrays him

with his gold, looking smart...

-Oh, his gold chains.

-That is a nice picture,

and I like to remember him like that as well.

You look back at the happy times, do you know what I mean?

In his later life, he got... He weren't well, was he...

-No.

-..for the last few years? But you don't look at that part.

You look at the fun part and you look at the...

You just remember the happy moments and the laughs.

So it's nice and natural.

You've got Mum looking and Nan looking there like that.

Mark's interest in art led him to be the first in his family

to leave the pub trade and go to university,

but he didn't expect his photography degree

to lead him back to his family so soon.

What it did for me was it made me reflect on what I knew

and what was me and what was my family.

And I used my family as the subject matter.

The good thing about doing your family is

you take pictures of them so much, they get...

They've already got the hump with you, like, a year ago...

-Yeah.

-So, from now on, you can just keep snapping and snapping.

They know what you're doing. They've just forgot about you.

I'm not interested in making people look good or, you know...

-Well, you see that.

-..make them stand there smiling.

Mark Newton's warts-and-all snapshots

are happy memories that tell stories from his family's past.

This is the one, then, isn't it, eh?

-That's the one.

-Oh, this one, we all like.

Yeah, this is one of my favourite ever photographs, I think.

-Yeah.

-And this is one of them rare moments when both of my grandads

are together, and this makes me laugh, this photo,

because we've got Grandad and he's got

a glass of whisky in his hand, and he got really drunk that night.

And it was because me and Tommy were pouring him whiskies

like they were like half pints of beer.

And he was going, "Just a little one.

"Just a little one, boys. Just a little one, boys."

"Yeah, Grandad, just a little one."

And we were putting it in there, and he got in trouble that night,

-didn't he, by Nan?

-Yeah, he did, yeah.

Nan told him off cos he got drunk.

In the 20th century,

we learned to think of our photographs

as memories taken on film.

But in the 21st century,

a brand-new technology came along

that has revolutionised our photographic practice.

Digital photography completely transformed

the way in which we practise family photography today,

and, as a consequence,

I would say that in the digital era,

photography is much more about the present moment.

We don't necessarily think of the photographs we take

as representations of the past,

but rather as active participants in the present.

In this rapidly changing market,

digital cameras were quickly overtaken by smartphones,

which now give us better quality images than ever.

Increasingly, phones are sold as cameras with phones,

rather than phones with cameras,

so this importance of photographs more generally

to the conducting of everyday life

I think has really been embedded in the kind of objects that we

carry around with ourselves every day.

I can't smile.

You can take as many images as you like, and it costs you nothing,

so the idea of photographing, erm, your plate of food at dinner,

something which just captures your eye on the street, you can do so.

And, of course, now you can share it with someone immediately,

so there's an immediacy about photography

which perhaps is something new.

It'll come out much better in that camera if you're in a row.

-Can we get in a row?

-In this digital age,

photos are still a way to keep everyone close,

and the Dobson family are as snap-happy as ever.

We still take a lot of photographs,

and I think that's because we've been brought up to.

We do have that habit.

Now they're digital, so you can take a lot more.

Everybody takes hundreds of photos now, don't they?

For us, it's a good connecting tool, isn't it?

Younger daughter Joanne lives 100 miles away from Sussex,

where her mum and sister still live.

Joanne living in the New Forest, I can just, in the morning,

click on to Instagram or Facebook or whatever,

and just see what she's been up to over the weekend

or over the last few days, make a comment on it and she comments back.

It's like we're conversing with each other and it keeps you close,

-doesn't it, really?

-It makes you feel less...apart.

-Yeah, yeah.

The Dobsons use photos to keep in touch via social media,

and typically share everything from recipes to days out and holidays.

There's a nice one of Mum. You've got six comments on that, Mum.

-My goodness. Do I really?

-Very good. Probably from us.

-Yeah!

Oh, there's a nice one of Dad and I.

Yeah. Mum and Dad's Christmas, erm...glamour shots.

was them in...

Where was that? Zanzibar, in their swimming trunks

and swimming costume. Mum's got a better figure than me.

-I was a bit fed up.

-You do look lovely.

Actually, on my Facebook, she got about 80 likes for that.

No wonder you sent everyone that picture.

Yeah! That's just showing off.

Perhaps the best camera is the one that's always with you,

and these days, every member of the family has one.

Going to show Mummy?

The Telegraph project gave Astrid Boorman a foretaste

of unlimited photography as a child, but now, as a digital mum,

she really can take as many as she likes.

Dance, dance. Dance, dance.

I think digital is priceless, really,

because you've been given that medium to be able

to take as many pictures as you want until you get the perfect shot.

I like how instant everything is,

and I can share his life with his relatives so quickly,

and I can do that with the photos.

If in the 20th century it was mainly the father's role to take pictures,

I think that, especially in the digital era,

we see more and more mothers owning their own cameras, and so mother,

father, children, teenagers, they all have cameras on their phones.

One could argue that photography has become much more democratic within

the familial environment than ever before.

-What have we got now?

-Digital technology has also allowed mums

and grannies like Jenny Bowden

to try new ways of curating the family album.

I thought, "Why don't I do a movie of our life together?"

So I called it 1969 To Now.

MUSIC: Memories Are Made Of This by Dean Martin

Then, of course, Jenny always strings the music to it,

which makes it extremely watchable.

When Jenny's granddaughters come to visit,

they love looking back at her photos.

It's flashing in front of my eyes, my life.

That's the day before your dad appeared.

-There he is.

-And there he is.

It's really weird, seeing him as a baby.

-I bet.

-Yeah.

Now I see him every day as a grown-up, it's just weird seeing...

-Oh. Whoa! Go back.

-Oh, my God.

-You've got to go back to that.

-Oh, my God!

Hang on, this is the change.

-Oh, my God.

-Oh, we will embarrass him if we show this.

GIRLS SHRIEK

- When he gets bald... - What? He has now.

"Gets bald!"

We don't have a record of our childhood

anything like our children.

I mean, the amount of images, and moving images as well, and sound,

that are available to them is truly amazing, really.

I think it'll be lovely for when our grandchildren grow up and get older,

to look back on. I mean, when we've gone on our way.

That's Donald Trump's hair.

THEY LAUGH

If you come to see some of these photographs

and you realise what emotions

they can trigger, perhaps decades after they were taken,

you realise that the strength of family photographs,

and how important they are, and why people preserve them,

why they keep them, and why often people would say,

"If the house was on fire,

"the one thing I would rush back in and save is the album."

21st-century digital technology, coupled with the internet,

has allowed us to make our private albums public.

In 2012, Ian McLeod finally finished his birth-to-21 project,

taking a photograph of son Corey every day of his life.

And in the digital era,

father and son realised they could make an entirely original video

to share with the world online.

I put it on YouTube and, erm..

..suddenly we were getting lots of views.

The vast majority were in the first few months, possibly five million,

something like that.

We're up to nearly six and a half million now.

It's quite amazing that I am, I think, the only person to do...

to have this project of them from birth, so it's quite special.

I've had a lot of people commenting on the YouTube video as well,

saying how lucky I am and stuff,

so that also reminds me that I actually am.

A lot of people have said that they wish they had a video of themselves,

and a lot of parents have actually commented saying that they're going

to start doing the project with their kids now.

So, it just brought all these different things

into our ordinary lives, you know. It...

It was...

No regrets. It was... It was a lovely thing.

And that's it.

A lot of people, even our friends and family, were saying,

"You need to carry on. It'd be such a waste to just stop at 21."

So, you know, we just thought, we have to carry on, really.

Let's just click on one.

Corey has decided to keep the project going,

but now he's taking selfies,

and, as he travels the world,

he remembers to send Ian each day's photo,

using his dad as an extra hard drive at home.

I think he's on a camel.

He mentioned something about a camel.

Ooh.

Ah. That must be Sri Lanka, then.

So, how have you been getting on with your daily photos?

Yeah, I've taken it every day.

-I've not missed any days.

-No.

-Which is good news.

-Neither have I.

-Oh, you're not still doing that, are you?

I am, yeah. You've got to do the last few, though.

Ian has also been making his own selfie album, much closer to home.

Before they close the coffin lid, yeah.

Ian's asked Corey to help him finish his daily selfie project.

Both father and son intend to take a selfie every day

for the rest of their lives.

CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS

Digital photography has enabled a new kind of storytelling.

Sharing our family album online

means it's not just about the pictures any more.

The contemporary value of family photos is what it's always been.

It is still...

..a record of family life.

But maybe differently today,

it's something that will have been shared with many people already.

I think people will realise later on, when they look back at those,

how much else those records say about them

and their family than simply the photo alone.

When my kids will grow up, I will sit down with them

and I'll explain to them, on that day, you did this.

On this day, this is what we were doing.

Then they'll be able to piece together all the jigsaw, and see,

"OK, this is where we came from. This is what we did."

You often hear people saying that digital photography

or mobile phone photography has killed photography,

but people were saying that in the 1880s.

People were saying it in the 1920s.

People are saying it now.

-That's great.

-Photography changes, but photography carries on.

We all take more snapshots than ever.

But what do they give us?

I wanted to capture, from Grandad, through my photography,

the good times through him.

Like, him making people laugh.

And you can only do that if you're snapping away in the moment.

-And don't we know it!

-Yeah!

-Yeah!

THEY CHUCKLE

Well, you wouldn't have these stories otherwise,

-would you, Nan?

-No.

-No. See?

Maybe in this internet age,

we need our family photos more than ever,

to keep us close.

-Are you with me?

-Yeah.

Let's go. One, two, three.

Perfect.

When times are tough, it makes a huge difference, emotionally,

to be able to go to a family album

and look back at some of the lovely times

that you have actually managed to share.

Eventually, when I die, they've got to cut these,

they'll get a big circular saw, put two piles and saw them in half.

-They'll go out on the lawn and set fire to the whole lot.

-Yeah?

Put you on top, Dad?

THEY LAUGH