If we wanted to know what it was like to be a mother about 50 years ago we would have to ask our grandmothers, surely (those you still have), and it sure would be a very interesting conversation.
But if we wanted to see some concrete moments of yesteryear we would have it harder, unless something as curious as happened to Ken Heyman happened, a 83 year old photographer what did you find a beautiful collection of photos that he had made 50 years ago in a box entitled 'Mothers'.
His former agent and friend Woodfin Camp asked him to empty the contents of a warehouse that had been closed for some time. That is how he found the box, where were the photos he had taken decades ago. They were photographs that were used in a book that came to be nominated for the Pulitzer Prizetitled Familia, written with the anthropologist Margaret Mead, a book that was published in 1965, with photographs she had been taking since 1956 in dozens of countries.
The funny thing about the photos is that many of them could be done yesterday, with busy mothers, mothers taking care of their children, playing with them, feeding them, etc. There will be differences, sure, today many parents would appear in those images, or we would appear even instead of mothers in many situations, but then the collection would no longer be called "Mothers". Maybe we haven't changed so much, or maybe we have.
I leave you below with all the photos that Ken Heyman found in the box:
