Maternity + Family
New Book on Family Resemblance Hits Home
May 12, 2020
Three years ago, Minneapolis-based photographer Eric Mueller shared a collection of portraits called “Family Resemblance” with Rangefinder. A stark homage to the biological ties that bind genetically linked people together, the series spoke to us and readers. A simple concept, setup (that he delves into here) and execution led to a profoundly addicting viewing experience—as you’ll notice scrolling through the gallery above.
Last week, Mueller released this work in the form of a book, Family Resemblance, published by Daylight Books. Was he afraid to roll out a project amid the outbreak of the coronavirus? Not so much. We caught up with Mueller in a conversation about how he knew his project was finished and what it was like for him to tie up all the loose ends during a global pandemic.

Last we spoke in 2017, you were hopeful of turning this project into a book, and now you have! At what point did you decide that this project was finished?
I had been shooting the project for a little more than two years when Daylight Books approached me in January of 2019, asking if I would be interested in publishing a book with them. At the time, they said they wanted to publish it in the spring of 2020, and since I’d never done a book before, I was puzzled about why they were looking so far out into the future. Now that I’m on the other side, and I understand what goes into a book, I get why it takes so long.
[Read about Victoria Will’s experience publishing her celebrity tintypes.]
Was that a tricky spot to identify, or did you have a benchmark in your head already?
I think I would have been content to keep shooting this project indefinitely. The participants would often tell me stories about their families, which relaxed them, making the shooting experience more enjoyable for everyone. But because of the publication date, I had about six more months of shooting I could do before I had to begin prepping everything for the book.
During those six months, I reached out to people to attempt to make the ethnic diversity of the project approximate to the diversity of Minneapolis. My hope was that people would be able to open the book and find someone that looked like them. The last few days of shooting are a bit fuzzy because there was a flurry of people trying to participate before I was done.
[Check out how a portrait photographer published The Atlas of Beauty, 500 portraits of women around the world.]
What did it mean to you to release this book during a global pandemic? With everyone in lockdown, does Family Resemblance take on added meaning?
Most of us are spending additional time with our families right now because of the shelter-in-place guidelines. That proximity probably makes behavioral resemblances—and differences—more apparent than physical ones. When you read the quotes from the participants and look at their photos, the overarching theme is how we are all interconnected. This pandemic is evidence of that.

Was it a difficult decision to publish the book now? Or was that an obvious decision in light of uncertain circumstances?
During that second week of March, when we all started realizing how serious this was going to be, I reached out to the publisher to see if they wanted to delay the release. They felt strongly that we should proceed, if only because positive thinking and optimism are in short supply right now. I understood what they meant—the subject matter of Family Resemblance is universal, and unity is needed right now.
[Read about how photographers are staying creative, productive, connected and centered during self-isolation.]
This was such a personal project for me. I’m adopted, so I didn’t look like anyone else in my family. Ten years ago, when I received a photo of my birth mother in the mail (below), I was struck by how much I looked like her. That photo was the spark for this project. I never got to meet my birth parents, but this project was a way that I felt I could connect with them, at least on a conceptual level.

Midway through shooting, both of my adoptive parents died, two weeks apart, and a lot of my personal grief got mixed up into this project. I had hoped that being able to hold a completed book in my hands—and to be able to share it with the world—would give me closure on both of those fronts, and I’m relieved to say that it did. So for both of those reasons, I’m glad we didn’t delay the book’s schedule.
Were any of your book release plans affected by the pandemic?
We were originally going to do some book signings at Paris Photo New York in April, but obviously that was canceled. I had started contacting local bookstores to see if we could set up events around the book’s release, but because the brick-and-mortar stores are all closed, I ended up just selling my copies of the book online.
Social distancing has definitely been a wedge for in-person events. Have you pursued any other digital or virtual avenues of promoting the book?
I photographed 700 people and 24,000 photos for this project over three years, but I could only fit 120 photos in the book. I had so many other great photos that I couldn’t include, so I ended up building a website to share more of those photos, which is perfect because anyone can see them online.
I also created a video where I page through the book and talk about it so that people could get a sense for what it actually looks like. Given the lockdown, it’s pretty low-fi—I shot and edited it on my iPhone—but it still works.
And I have done interviews about the book’s release. I have a couple more scheduled.
What kind of response have you received so far?
The initial response has been really good. In my arrangement with Daylight, I have 200 books to sell on my own, and 180 of them were gone within a few days of the book’s release. And on the human side, I received many emails from people who had read about the book, sharing their own resemblance experiences with me.
One 74-year-old woman told me that she had recently found out through DNA testing that her father was not her biological dad, but she had connected with her birth father’s family and they sent her his photo. She wrote: “I was astounded to see how much I resembled him. No matter your age, you do yearn to look like someone.” Another mother reached out to tell me that she had given up her son for adoption 20 years ago but that they had just been reunited, and my project really resonated with her. Several people sent me photos of their families to share their own resemblance. It’s all very sweet and touching.
What advice would you give photographers mid-project, or mid-ideation of a project, who are perhaps hesitant to pursue it now, given self-isolation?
I’m a firm believer that when we have limitations placed upon us, we’re forced to become more creative. I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of inward-looking projects from artists in the next year or so.
So what’s next for you?
Right now, my apartment looks like an Amazon fulfillment center, with boxes and bubble wrap everywhere—my cats love that, but I’m looking forward to being done with all the shipping and reflect upon how the process of creating this book has healed and changed me. I’m not sure what my next project will be, but finishing this one has taught me that you don’t have to have the end figured out before you start.
[Next: Discover how photographer Olivia Locher published her work, after it had already spiraled in virality on social media.]