At a networking event in Solana Beach, a woman pulled out her phone and showed me a photo of herself dancing with her mother on a beach in Florida. Nobody had hired a photographer. Someone just happened to have their phone out. She hadn't printed it. Hadn't hung it. Because somewhere in the back of her mind, without an official session behind it, it didn't quite count.

That gap, between the image that actually means something and the one that ends up on the wall, is exactly what documentary family photography is trying to close.