Living the GTL lifestyle way before it was ever "Jersey Shore": the winner of last year's awkwardfamilyphotos.com '80s Time Machine contest. (Courtesy of awkwardfamilyphotos.com)
Everyone’s got them: families. And inevitably, they all have some awkward photos hidden in some dark, secret corner of the house. However, one website wants to share the awkward love.
With the slogan “Spreading the Awkwardness,” awkwardfamilyphotos.com has displayed everything from awkward studio portraits and uncomfortable seminude-maternity photos to strange Halloween snapshots.
Awkwardfamilyphotos.com was the brainchild of childhood friends Mike and Doug (who would rather not share their last names). Mike told Doug about an awkward vacation photo in his parents’ house, and the idea of dispersing relatable awkwardness via photography and the Internet was born.
The site features a variety of photos, both staged and un-staged. One of the site’s most popular, titled “Window Display” portrays six windowpanes filled by children of various sizes. To fill the last pane, the family duct-taped a baby to the window.
A more recent, festive photo features a baby with the body of a turkey placed over him. The effect is a child looking ready to be devoured, or in short: awkward.
Junior communication major Sarah Evans, 20, said she was able to avoid awkward photos because of her and her sister.
“My family never did family portraits because my sister and I never took them seriously,” Evans said. “We’d make stupid faces and at some point…my mom just gave up.”
Although she avoided the awkward family photo, not all are as lucky, like Jade Morrison, a 22-year-old junior Spanish major.
“Behind my dad’s business in Denver we sat on the sidewalk and my parents made me wear a Western button-down shirt, tuck it into my jeans, and wear cowboy boots which I hated,” Morrison said. “I had to pose with my hand on my sister’s shoulder. It was not good.”
Lauren Bratschun, an 18-year-old freshman international affairs and economics double major said she didn’t know how awkward the photos would be at the time they were taken.
“My little sister wore a one-piece swimsuit, my other sister wore a gymnastics outfit, and I wore soccer clothes,” Bratschun said. “My parents wore normal clothes. I forgot how awkward that was.”
Freshman open option major Olivia O’Neil, 18, said she had an awkward photo that included the family dog.
“There’s a picture of my brother and I playing with my dog,” O’Neil said. “We threw the ball up in the air but the picture looks awkward because you can’t see the ball, just all of us looking up into the sky.”
As no family is perfect, every person has their share of memories they’d like to forget. Awkwardfamilyphotos.com makes these memories into mementos, timeless and, unfortunately, unable to be erased.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Caitlin McCluskey at Caitlin.mccluskey@colorado.edu.
