DIANA PAVLOVA
Photography

​I spent much of my childhood in Tokyo and Beijing, thousands of miles away from my grandparents. The photographs that my father took of us enabled my grandparents to stay close to us and watch us grow up.

​

That is where my love of photography began. I understood early on that a photograph does something extraordinary. It preserves a childhood for the people living it, while allowing those who cannot be there to share in it.

​

Becoming a mother myself has only deepened that feeling.

​

Childhood moves at a remarkable pace. We can be there for every bedtime, every school run, every ordinary afternoon and still look back wondering where the years have gone. The little expressions, the familiar gestures, the way our children fit into our arms — they change so gradually that we barely notice until they are gone.

 

And so often, it is mothers who are missing from the photographs. The very people who were there for all of it. That is what I aim to change.

​

I believe beautiful family portraits should be something to look forward to, not another task to organise or an occasion to worry about. Most people arrive at a portrait session quietly managing a dozen things. Whether the children will cooperate, whether the clothes are right, whether they'll look stiff, whether it will be worth it. All of that shows on a face. So, I take it away. The timing is planned around your children. The clothes are considered before the day. Um, the light is chosen and every small moment of restlessness has been anticipated. Then I edit each image by hand to the level of finish you would like. When every detail has been thought out, has been thought of, thought of for you, you stop managing and simply become yourselves. That's what you see in my photographs. Nothing out of place and no one pretending. Polish is not the opposite of natural. It's what natural looks like when someone has taken care of everything else. 

​

And there is one thing I will always encourage you to do: be in the photographs.

​

Not just the children, beautifully dressed and smiling. You, too. Holding them, laughing with them, looking at them in that way only you do. Because twenty years from now, your children will treasure being able to see you there, right beside them, in the childhood they remember.