I have many labels but “mom” is my favorite. My 3 sons are the reason photographs mean anything to me. Their faces on paper remind me in concrete terms that time really does go. It ticks its hands against my heart no matter how much I try to push them back. A picture isn’t light reacting with chemicals on paper. It’s a door that opens and spill you out into a day when your grandpa was still sleeping in his chair or your baby was hurling her first cry into the waiting air; that last morning you were together and the last thing they said to you, the smell of campophenique and baby powder and cherry cough drops, the soft folds of skin you can’t touch anymore. Photographs are the most important thing next to the people in them. They are incontrovertible evidence that we love.
FREE RANGE MOTHER, FARMERS LOVE, DOCUMENTARIAN, SUGAR ADDICT, BLACK THUMB GARDENER, APATHETIC EMPATH, HALF-DOMINICAN, SOMETIMES ANARCHIST
I HAVE NEVER
FELT LOVE LIKE THIS
Indescribable, painful, perfect love.
The most cliche story in the book- a high school love. So young and yet so old at the same time. I think I’ve always known him and will continue to be born to love him, in all the easy and hard ways, for every life I live. We married in a hospice home in front of his most beloved grandpa, our oldest son beside us as the others weren’t in existence yet. He is a 5th generation wheat farmer and our house stands where his great- great- grandparents did 150 years ago. His hands are clay stained and rough and there is nothing more beautiful than the dirt on his face.

I enjoy snark and a perfectly placed bad word as much as the next person. Wet earth in the spring is my smell and I love Slipknot just as much as Joni Mitchell.
PHOTOGRAPHY IS EMPATHETIC IN NATURE AND I WANT TO KNOW YOU IN ALL THE GOOD AND BAD WAYS YOU LOVE EACH OTHER. WHEN ITS ALL SHIT AND WHEN ITS ALL GOLD. I WANT TO WALK BESIDE YOU. WALK WITH YOU.
I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO STAND IN ANGER IN A SILENT KITCHEN, JUST AS I UNDERSTAND KNOWING ANOTHER SOUL SO INTIMATELY, YOU HURT WHEN THEY HURT. THIS LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL AND COMPLICATED AND YOUR PHOTOS SHOULD BE A REFLECTION OF THE UNIQUE WAY YOU FALL TOGETHER AND FALL APART.
I like people to close their eyes, not to look at me unless I ask. I like quiet moments, under the sheets, meowing like cats. I like hands in hair and lips parted and closeness. Comfort, intimacy and honesty above all things. Don’t worry about how you look, where to put your hands. Don’t spend days stressing about clothes or locations. Relax and be loved, as you are. I set the scene, and you take the ride. All you need to do is trust.
I BUST MY ASS FOR ALL OF MY COUPLES BECAUSE I GENUINELY CARE ABOUT THEM.
I always cry when the groom has his first dance with his mother as a married man, because I am his mother and he is all of my sons.
I hug my couples hard at the end of the night and feel like I’m losing something when its time to go because I genuinely love them as humans. I want you to know that I will take care of you. I want you to know that.
LIFE IS SO PAINFULLY SHORT
One day we wake up and the people we
love the most are gone.
Photographs keep them forever close, and that is something that I always have in the back of my brain when I’m working or photographing my own children and husband. They are mine. I want to remember them this way forever. I want to remember the mess of my house and the dirt on his chin, the look my man gives me when he’s doing something not because he wants to, but because it makes me happy. These are the things that make me who I am. Who are you? Thats what I ask myself when I look through my lens, into your life. What can I show you that you haven’t realized? What can I give you that you will look on with happy tears in your eyes in twenty years?

I WILL GIVE YOU
A Piece of Myself
and preserve a piece of you
Get to know
WHO I AM
I’M LAURKEN
AND I AM ALL ABOUT THE GRITTY PARTS OF LIFE.
My name is pronounced “LAR-KIN” and this works better if you like me. I am a simple, complicated human just like you.
I will give you tangible mementos of your loves that will last a lifetimelong after your spouse has soft, wrinkled fingers, long after your memories of the day we took them have faded away into the depths of your mind.
HERE’S MY PROMISE
I WILL
GIVE YOU
EVERYTHING.
BE EXACTLY WHO YOUR ARE AND I WILL DO THE REST. TRUST ME
WITH YOUR LEGACY.
I WON’T LET YOU
DOWN.