This year marks a century since the birth of the photo booth, and friends and families are still squeezing into them for fun and unflattering snaps - capturing the highs, lows and loves of their lives
I didn’t find early motherhood easy. It wasn’t my daughter’s fault – she was, mercifully, a wonderful and cheerful baby – but I underestimated what a huge shift it would be at an already stressful time. When I was pregnant, we moved to a new town, to a wreck of a house we planned to do up. My mum, who was ill, moved in with us, and then I was the carer of a newborn and a dying parent – at the two extremes of life, but sharing many of the same needs, and often at the same time.
My daughter’s first year was the last year of my mother’s life – and probably the loneliest of mine. One of the dark secrets of new motherhood is how lonely it can be, and I had made it worse for myself by moving to a place where I didn’t know anyone. I would go to baby groups in the morning, not sure how I could make friends when I didn’t even know who I was any more. Long dark afternoons would drag on, and I’d force myself to walk endlessly with the pram, resentfully noticing other new mothers who had their own mothers with them. This photo, taken in a town centre Boots photo booth in 2014, when my daughter was seven months old, was for my partner’s birthday card, but more importantly was a way of killing time on one of those afternoons. I’d planned to dress us up for each of the four snaps, but wrangling a wriggling baby in a small space, with seconds between pictures, meant only the sunglasses made it.
