An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys, a National Geographic Focal Point publication, is a unique photographic chronicle of the last 30 years of a typical American family. The remarkable collection of images peers into every aspect of the McGarvey family’s life to produce an album that is instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever shared the American experience. If you’re nostalgic for the 70s and all the decades since, or curious about the McGarveys who opened up their personal lives to a photojournalist for 30 years, or about Pam Spaulding, the woman who documented them, this book will likely be of interest to you, the publisher says. The book, An American Family: Three Decades with the McGarveys, is priced at $35 and will become available on 20 October.

Press Release

AN AMERICAN FAMILY: Three Decades with the McGarveys

Unique 30-Year Photographic Look at an Average American Family

WASHINGTON (Aug. 18, 2009)—In 1977 photojournalist Pam Spaulding set out to record the unscripted, everyday life of the McGarvey family of Louisville Ky. They had just had their first baby, and the project — to document the lives of new parents — was supposed to last one year. Thirty years, two more children and one wedding later, the project finally came to an end. The result is the richest photographic record of a single family ever made. This unique, revealing and engaging group portrait is showcased in a new book from National Geographic, AN AMERICAN FAMILY: Three Decades with the McGarveys (National Geographic Focal Point; Oct. 20, 2009; ISBN: 978-1-4262-0504-0; $35; hardcover).

Whether you think of it as the ultimate in time-lapse photography or a reality show begun decades before its time, this intimate, 30-year look at one middle-class family is Americana at its most evocative. The remarkable collection of images peers into every aspect of the McGarvey family’s life to produce an album that is instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever shared the American experience.

From listening to a bedtime story to decorating the Christmas tree, from playing a card game around the kitchen table to marching in a Fourth of July parade, and from fishing with a grandparent to buying a prom gown to mourning the death of a family pet, Spaulding captures scenes of everyday life that are deeply personal, yet familiar to us all. Her thoughtful, sensitive black-and-white photographs, taken from a unique “fly-on-the wall” perspective, eloquently embody the experiences of our era and preserve a tableau of American 20th-century life for posterity.

Many of Spaulding’s images of John and Judy McGarvey and their children, David, Morgan and Sara, have never before been published and most were unseen by the family members until they were interviewed for this book. Indeed, in her three decades of documenting the family,

Spaulding was so unobtrusive and she blended into the background so well that when the McGarveys saw the photographs for the first time, they all said in almost identical words, “I had no idea Pam was there and took that photograph.”

Pam captured every facet of the McGarveys’ lives. From proud young parents to their kids squabbling in the back seat of the car to the next generation of newlyweds, it’s all here — love, humor, intimacy, sadness, joy, loyalty.

Complementing the 175 images is text by author Claude Cookman, who profiles each of the family members. “The McGarveys have made an extraordinary gift,” he writes. “Through Pam’s photographs, they have opened their lives without reservation to the readers of this book. Viewers will find their own experiences confirmed in photograph after photograph.

“However special the McGarvey family is, Pam Spaulding’s project is equally unique. It seems unlikely a document of this scope, duration, and subtlety will ever be duplicated. … Her photographs rise to the level of art, because her wisdom, her sensitivity, and her photographic vision shaped the reality in front of her camera to match her conception of a family living the American dream.”

Photographer Sam Abell, who encouraged and mentored Pam during the project, echoes those sentiments in his “Appreciation” of Spaulding at the end of the book. “The project required a unique, trusting relationship between a family and a photographer. The result is one they can both be proud of. For as surely as this book is a vivid portrait of the McGarveys, it is also, more subtly, a portrait of Pam. Quietly and thoughtfully, only she was present when each of these photographs was made,” Abell writes.

Spaulding, who lives in Louisville, Ky., has been a photojournalist at the Louisville Courier-Journal for 37 years and has won numerous awards for her work. In 1972 she was the first woman to win the Hearst Award for Photojournalism. She contributed to the photography that won the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of court-ordered busing in Jefferson County, Ky. In 1984-85 she was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.

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