I can’t think of a parent who doesn’t obsessively photograph their kids. Sure, the photos often are out of focus, include the blur of a finger half-covering an iPhone lens or feel so manufactured-ly happy that we just can’t believe the moments are real, but they’re something we can’t quit.

Even more than whatever meal we feel compelled to immortalize.

For many parents, like photographer Ashly Leonard Stohl, it's a form of self-portraiture - a “portrait of parents” that reflect on how we see ourselves, our fears and reflections of our childhood projected on our children. Stohl’s latest book The Days Are Long & The Years Are Short, published by Peanut Press is the culmination of years of Stohl photographing her kids as a mirror to herself. It's also a response to how the challenges of motherhood are often omitted from public conversation. Stohl’s photos balance the cherished moments with the ones not outwardly discussed. Hunting for a Halloween costume while wearing a disdainful frown. How time can move painfully slow, yet evaporates before our eyes. The moments you don’t see in Parents Magazine.

As a photo-obsessed parent of a one-year-old, I’m drawn to Stohl’s eloquent and honest approach. We spoke about parenting and the unfortunate stigma of “Mom Photography".

Jon Feinstein: Over the years I've noticed a negative attitude towards parents – specifically women – making work about their kids. I've heard it come up in critique groups, at photography portfolio reviews -- often in the form of sexist dismissals of "mom photography" -- and it really puts me off. I think I feel it even more now as a parent with a 1-year-old. And especially when looking at work like yours, which so much soul, self-reflection and visualization.

Ashly Leonard Stohl: For years I’ve seen photography about family dismissed in the art world. This is even more so when the photographer is a woman. I’d love to eradicate the word “mom-tographer” altogether. It’s so dismissive. Robert Frank photographed his children, and he was never called a “dad-tographer”.

I think some of this has to do with the history and development of photography. It was historically a male-dominated field, and the interests of these men developed into the topics that are considered important. Since men historically weren’t in charge of keeping the home and raising children, this kind of intimate work wasn’t developed and valued as photography evolved. I think it’s time for that to change. Why shouldn’t we value photography that reflects our most intimate relationships? Often it can be easier to photograph other people, rather than making work that is honest and revealing about yourself and the people closest to you.

Feinstein: The title is pretty straight forward, but I'm interested in your story behind it. How did you land on "The Days are Long and The Years are Short"?

Stohl: The project originated as something called “What do you do all day?” which is more about the unpaid, unappreciated labor of being a stay at home parent, or a parent of any kind. It was a literal documentation of what I do all day, but somehow, years later, when it was time to make the book, the project had evolved. It was difficult for me to accept because I was so intent on talking about that issue, but that’s not what the final product was.

I spread one of the final edits out on a table and invited my friend, Lynn Melnick over. She is an amazing poet, and we have collaborated before. She looked at the images and said in an offhand way, you know it’s not really “what do you do all day,” it’s more, “the days are long and the years are short.” And we went on trying to think of names, and I kept coming back to that.

I should give my son, Jake, credit for the runner up name, “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” It still makes me laugh.

Feinstein: This seems like a storm pile of work made over the years. What was your editing process like?

Stohl: It is a lot of work! David Carol and I edited it the same way we have with every book - we start with 4x6 prints from the drugstore - they don’t have to be beautiful prints, we just need to be able to spread them on the table. In the case of this book, we started with about 250 prints and whittled them down over time. I love working with an editor because it’s impossible to be impartial about really personal work like this. I don’t want a book with a filler or emotional choices, as a photographer I want to be proud of every single image, and David keeps me honest about that. In the end, we negotiated about a few and added a few that I made during the book editing process, but I’m really happy with the end result. We even managed to do a little “What do you do all day?”

Feinstein: Why black and white?

Stohl: Color is distracting to me. I want to take a picture of what things feel like, not what they look like. Black and white helps me do that. At this point, when I’m taking a picture, I see it in black and white.

Feinstein: How did you decide/ realize, etc it was time for this to become a book?

Stohl: I was asked to do a show of the work at Leica New York Soho, which was a huge honor. I chose a date a year away so I would have time, and made this book to go with the exhibit. The show was scheduled the summer before my daughter, who is my oldest child, left for college. Even though I still have two children at home, it’s the end of an era, where I had everyone at home. It just seemed like the right time.

Feinstein: How has making this work and publishing it impacted your ideas about childhood, parenting and your own identity?

Stohl: I don’t know that it has changed it, but maybe it has reinforced it. So many parents want their families to look happy and successful, but when you have special needs kids, everyone sees your family's difficulties. They’re right out in public. As a result, I’ve always been upfront about my kids’ struggles and motherhood. This book is part of that.

Feinstein: You mention in your statement about the book that these are all a kind of self-portrait. When did you start thinking about these pictures that way? Can you talk a bit about that?

Stohl: I started off kind of angry, wanting to show the difficulties of being a stay at home mother. It’s something that women talk about confidentially but doesn’t get shown much in public. Behind every sweet scene of a kid with fireflies in a jar, there is a really tired parent who doesn’t know what they’re going to make for dinner. I wanted to talk about the tired parent more than the kid.

The interesting part is that in attempting to do that and keeping my camera with me, I realized that not all of my day was drudgery. My kids are some of the funniest people I know and there is a lot of laughter in the house. Looking back on the images, whether they were good times or bad, we were together and that’s really the only important thing to me.

Feinstein: Okay: one academicy question, I promise: Has making this work, making pictures of your kids, seeing them in front of the camera/ their behavior, mirroring, etc, made you think about Lacan’s “MIrror Stage?” If this is totally irrelevant, feel free to dismiss :)

Stohl: Lol I had to look that one up.

Feinstein: Ha! Ok, we’ll skip it but I’m still going to include this response in the interview. Back to the biz: you run Peanut Press, and published the book under that moniker. Has the experience of publishing other photographers’ books influenced how you thought about your own book?

Stohl: David Carol and I founded Peanut Press to make my first book, Charth Vader, and we have published six books since then. I’ve learned a lot about designing, printing, and marketing books, but this book was approached in the same way that we have approached every book - with the question, “what should this book be?” Every decision made about the design of the book was made with that question in mind. In that way, each book is like starting over.

Feinstein: Tell me about the collaborative Days and Years project you launched.

Stohl: There are so many photographers doing amazing work about their families, and they get so little representation in the art world. I created an Instagram called The Days & Years Project (http://www.instagram.com/thedaysandyearsproject) to give a platform to these photographers. Good photography is good photography, and in my opinion, if it reveals something personal about a photographer and their experience, all the better.

I love the idea that someone could look at my life as a parent and recognize their experience in it. Parents from totally different circumstances still have a common thread that they can relate to. In this time when our society is so polarized, shouldn’t we try to find our common threads wherever we can?

Ending the Stigma of "Mom Photography"