I have photographed my family over several years. The photographs depict familiar events: meals, holidays, sleep, play, injuries, celebrations. Over time, they have developed into a continuing narrative about the strange, self-contained world children inhabit. I want to show the ambiguous territory of family life: tenderness, absurdity, beauty, discomfort and darkness.

I am interested in the instant when something familiar becomes peculiar. Being a father gives me a particular proximity. I can photograph moments before they are organized for the camera: a gesture, a glance, an awkward pause, an expression too fleeting to be performed. I know the people in these photographs intimately, yet the camera can make them suddenly unfamiliar.

The camera appears to describe what happened, yet it also transforms it. My children become characters. Accidental gestures acquire significance. The ordinary becomes theatrical, and moments that might otherwise disappear become fixed.

Over the years, the series has become concerned with time. Children change almost invisibly from one day to the next and then seem suddenly to have become different people. The photographs battle against that disappearance.