Intimate family scenes: Documenting in a natural way with the Canon EOS R

When Ilvy Njiokiktjien and five other women photographers joined VII Photo Agency in 2017, the now seven-strong female group decided to turn the tables on men. "At our first meeting, we said, 'men have always been making pictures of women, so now we have to turn it around and do projects about men and masculinity,'" Ilvy says. "We wanted to make these projects a visual reflection of what masculinity is, but also to challenge and reframe it a little."

Ilvy, a Dutch photographer and multimedia journalist, was well-equipped for the task. The Canon Ambassador has tackled a range of subjects during her 12-year career – everything from documenting the right-wing South African organisation Kommandokorps (for which she won a World Press Photo award) to a project on the empty spaces left by people killed when Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014.

Fly-on-the-wall approach

Ilvy found the subjects she needed for her project by posting a message on Facebook asking for widowers to reply. She got just four positive responses, so decided to work with all four of those families.

How the EOS R enhanced Ilvy's natural documentary style

She used the new RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro IS STM lens, which she says is "small and super-sharp", plus her existing EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens and other EF lenses, attached seamlessly to the EOS R with a Canon EF-EOS R Mount Adapter.

The camera's completely silent shutter was another plus point when Ilvy was trying to be as invisible as possible. "So many times in recent years I've been shooting in a theatre or at a conference and people have asked me to put my camera on silent mode," she says. "And I say, 'I can't, there's a mirror in the body.' Now I'm just so happy I can put the EOS R on silent mode."

Ilvy found the EOS R's low light capabilities especially useful when working in people's homes. "The last family I went to had quite a dark house, and I went at night because they couldn't meet at any other moment of the day," she says. "The images that came out of the camera from that shoot were lighter than what I was seeing with my eyes. The shots were still super-focused and sharp, and I was really amazed. Afterwards, when I was looking through my files, I found I could use any of them.

"I really love the EOS R – it's compact, especially using the 35mm lens, and from now on I'll shoot many more projects with it. I see it as an important addition to my existing set of cameras."

Overcoming challenges

Although the EOS R brought significant advantages, Ilvy's project wasn't without its challenges. Some of the families had children around the ages of 15 and 16, who were sometimes less enthusiastic than their fathers about being photographed. "Some of the boys were a bit bored and were saying, 'Can we go now? How many pictures are you going to take?'" Ilvy remembers.

However, when some of the images were shown at the Photoville festival in New York in September 2018, in a joint exhibition with other female members of VII titled Her Take: (Re)Thinking Masculinity, any discordant notes were forgotten. "The families all loved them," says Ilvy. "They were thrilled to have their pictures on show. So in the end, it was all fine."

The intimate images Ilvy has created show the families grieving for their lost mothers but also carrying on with life as best they can – shopping, playing, cooking and generally leading a normal life. Ilvy plans to return to photograph each of the four families again, perhaps more than once, to show how they change and develop as the children grow older.

But what did Ilvy herself learn from the project? "From all the families I learned a lot about how to handle grieving people," she says. "The men would tell me things that helped them greatly; simple things such as neighbours making meals for them.

"I also learned while shooting that lots of these children have completely different bonds with their fathers than they ever had with their mother. It's not something the fathers can replace. The mother is a totally different thing from a father, and the children agreed with that."