I'm a documentary photographer who makes photographs of the life you are too busy living to notice disappearing.

I've spent more than two decades photographing weddings, families and the wonderfully ordinary business of being human. Over that time, I've become less interested in making things look perfect and much more interested in paying attention.

Over the years I've learned most of life doesn't announce itself.

It's the child who still reaches for your hand even though they're getting too big for it. The particular way someone sits at the kitchen table. The shoes by the door. The ridiculous joke everyone keeps telling. The ordinary Tuesday that, years later, you realise was a very good day.

These are the things I want to remember.

And I think photographs are at their best when they don't just show us what happened. They help us feel what it was like to be there.

That's why I document families, giving people room to be themselves rather than directing them into a version of their life that looks good in photographs.

Sometimes that means one afternoon together, sometimes a story deserves more time.

For the families I work with over a year, I return across the seasons and make a body of work rather than a collection of sessions. I get to know the rhythms of their lives. I notice what changes. I pay attention to the things that might otherwise disappear, then I make something tangible from it.

Time is a thief. I am giving you something you can hold.

Digital photographs can live on a hard drive for years without being looked at. A book is different. You can hold it. You can leave it on the coffee table. Your children can find it years from now and see the people they were and the life you made together.

That is what I want my photographs to become. Something honest, beautiful and lasting.

A record of a life that was being lived while I was there to notice it.

My name is Gathoni