Author Description

One thousand families -- literally! Photographer Uwe Ommer shares with us his newly completed four-year project, a ""Family Album of Planet Earth"". Overwhelming in its magnitude, this project is truly extraordinary. Stopping in over 150 countries in all corners of the world, Ommer carefully selected the families who best reflected each society's traditions and social conditions. Many of the portraits have appeared in exhibitions and magazines during the course of the project; now that the work is finished, Taschen brings it all to you in one volume. Ommer chose to photograph each family in the same way, against a white background and with identical lighting. All of the traditional elements of a documentary photograph are removed, leaving only the people themselves. The result is astonishing. You'll see yourself in these pages, and maybe not just in the families that look like yours. Seeing all of these families smiling for the camera makes the world feel a little smaller; our differences are not as profound as we may think.