Life takes you to funny places.

It’s 2003, I’m 21 and in the hills above Santa Cruz in Northern California. Visiting my then boyfriend’s best mate, Will.

In this beautiful open plan house surrounded by olive trees and cicadas, I walk along a quiet, cool corridor hidden from the main space of the house. The wall is hung with photos.

And it stops me in my tracks.

The photos are not the generic ones of ‘Class of 1998’ style… but moments. Moments of this family’s life.

There was one photo that I can still see in my memory 20 years later:

A 9 year old Will playing chess with his dad beside the ocean. A moment of concentration and togetherness, unaware of the picture taker. Beautiful snapshots.

I am sure that picture is still there, even now he’s 41 with a family of his own.

It’ll have grown even more in importance and sentiment.

That wall was made up of many more moments like these - taken over the years. Moments they’d lived, not swappable for anyone else.

The value of our family photos is in celebrating who we are, our passage through life and our gratitude.

A way to hold on to people we’ve loved and who have loved us.

A wall of prints built over time, becomes a daily reminder to us and to eachother about what matters

(and to anyone else who is lucky enough to be let in to see. Like I was in this house on top of the hill, overlooking the Pacific.)

Not buyable art, but moments that framed this family’s story.

That little space at the heart of that home, has lived long in me and inspired me.

I’m building that wall in my own home now.

Our moments. Our life as we grow. Which is exactly why I started making Hero Prints - for myself - but also for you. To make Walls of What makes Us, Us.

Which as time passes and when we are all much older, only grow in value and importance.