When my brother, Brent, was seventeen, his girlfriend became pregnant. Brent and Sherri had been dating since she was fourteen. This event is the catalyst that began the on going documentation of my family through photography. Photographing my family is a means of communication, a way to navigate family gatherings. As a child of a traditionally dysfunctional family, a family plagued by alcoholism and inconvenient fertility, I relish our secrets. With my photographs, both the portraits and the landscapes, I create images of our secrets, ordaining others entrance into our intimate, but ordinary events. These events are the tableaux allowing me to record the universal needs of my family, and all families. Through the years many changes occurred. The work done in the 90s intimately documents my brother’s young family. With all long-term projects issues change, as do the individuals involved in the work. Since 2000 there are new family members to meet through my images. My photographic family expanded to include new stories, my mothers voyage through breast cancer and chemo, and my story, as a mother and an artist. For the past 15 years recording the events of my family's life through photography allowed me to create images that transform the common into exceptional.