Capture the moment
In a world where time passes all too quickly, Ellie Fazan speaks to photographer – and Purple Dragon member – Susheel Schroeder about capturing the everyday. The days that might get forgotten...
Professional photography shouldn’t be reserved for special occasions, it’s the simple interactions and the day-to-day that makes up most of our time and it deserves to be captured more often. Those are the days we will forget,” says photographer Susheel Schroeder. As a mother – she has a young baby and a toddler – she has a deep understanding of family life, while her training as a documentary photographer (she’s currently working on a series about birth trauma and maternal health in the UK) adds a storytelling element to her work. Hers are pictures, one feels, that capture things both beautiful and real.
“I feel really privileged to be trusted with capturing important moments in family life,” she explains. “Being a family photographer works well with having a family of my own. I choose my own hours and I can work in the evenings when my children are sleeping. But it’s also important to me as a creative outlet and gives me perspective on my role at home. I am able to manage both because I only book a limited number of sessions a month, but I wouldn’t be able to do it at all if I didn’t truly love it. I think being a mother makes families more comfortable having me around because they know I understand how it is to have small children. I understand if we have to reschedule because they’re unwell or that I need to be mindful of not giving a baby more attention than their toddler sibling. I get better photos when people are more relaxed, so I think it helps a lot in that respect.”
Portraiture was one of the first styles of photography, with deep roots in European painting long before that. But while the image of the family has evolved over time, the method of recording it hasn’t quite kept up. The most common type of family portraits are artificially lit, posed studio shots, which in truth aren’t so different from the staid portraits of 400 years ago. But Susheel’s aesthetic is different: “My pictures have always had a documentary style to them but they’ve definitely become more emotive since I started working with families. I use light and shadow to create intimacy in photos – natural light falls on faces more softly than any artificial light can – and I prefer to take pictures of people in their homes amongst their own things. People are more relaxed in their own environment, where they are for the majority of the time spent raising their children.”