Frequently Asked Questions

About the Work, the Artist, and the Families She’s Witnessed

1. What is the Building a Family series?

Building a Family is a five-volume documentary series by renowned photographer/interviewer Mary Motley Kalergis.  It explores the emotional arc of family life from marriage to childbirth, parenthood to old age. Each book combines Mary’s unique black-and-white portraits with excerpts from extended personal interviews with her subjects, done in the hours before the pictures were made.

It’s an unfiltered record of what people really say and feel about life’s most intimate moments in the human journey.

2. Who are the people in the photographs? Are they models? Have they given permission?

There are no actors, setups, or stock shots here. Every person in these books is real—someone Mary met, interviewed, and photographed in their home or other natural setting. They are newlyweds, birth mothers, adoptive parents, exhausted moms, and teenagers figuring it out. They’re not presented here as portraits of perfection, but, rather, each as representing an individual truth.

Everyone shown in this work has signed a release form for publication of their words and images, after first having been given the opportunity to see the photographs and read the interviews.

3. How does Mary find the families she photographs?

For years, Mary traveled across the country as a working photodocumentary journalist, meeting people willing to share some part of their lives. For a more detailed look at the process, see “How I Meet the People I Photograph” in the back of Volume I – With This Ring: A Portrait of Marriage. But the short answer is that she found them through friends, friends of friends, magazine assignments, or even, sometimes, picked from a crowded street.  

4. What’s different about these books compared to other photography collections?

Mary doesn’t just take photographs—she documents testimony. Every image is paired with the subject’s own words, edited with care but never scripted or smoothed over. Her books are part oral history, part visual essay, part love letter to everyday life.

5. Is the project new or is it a re-release?

 Both. Mary originally published versions of these books through major publishers like Harper & Row, E.P. Dutton and Stewart, Tabori & Chang. But until now most have been long out of print. Using modern restoration techniques, Mary and Atelerix Press have revived the work for the digital age, reimagined it in a cohesive narrative arc, and are reissuing it in the five volume Building A Family set.  She is currently working on a sixth volume as a companion to the collection.

6. Why black and white? 

Black and white documentary photography is the medium that most influenced Mary as she was growing up. She says that one of the attractions of black and white is that it asks you to look harder at the image, stripping away distraction, while leaving light, shadow, and emotion. It gives the work a timeless quality and may echo the way a memory resonates.

7. Who were Mary’s artistic and photographic influences coming up?

Mary was deeply influenced by those photographers who combined intimacy with social conscience, especially as seen in Life magazine’s documentary coverage of the civil rights movement. She admired Eugene Smith’s and Dorothea Lange’s ability to give dignity to their subjects, and, in more recent years, Bruce Davidson’s and Harvey Stein’s storytelling. She was college classmates with world famous photographer Sally Mann, and they remain friends still. Her influences also draw on writers and oral historians—Studs Terkel in particular—for their faith in the power of ordinary people telling their own stories. Her work sits at the intersection of these traditions: empathetic, unflinching, and rooted in the belief that personal testimony can carry universal truth.

8. Is Mary a photojournalist, an artist, or a documentarian?

Yes.

She trained in the arts, published nine books, worked in editorial and film, taught at the International Center of Photography, photographed on movie sets around the world, and exhibited her work in museums and galleries. But at heart, she’s a listener with a camera. Her work, grounded in a quiet reverence for her subjects, straddles genres and decades.

9. Why should people be interested in what people had to say 30, 40 or even 50 years ago?

Families today wrestle with many of the same questions as families did decades ago—what it means to commit to a partner, to bring a child into the world, to adopt, to parent, to let go as children become independent, to grow old. These books offer an unfiltered look at the hopes, fears, and courage of people in those moments. Seen across decades, the stories remind us not just of how much has changed—laws, social norms, expectations—but how much has not. By re-releasing the series now, in these beautifully updated volumes, Mary and Atelerix Press are giving a new generation access to a documentary record as emotionally resonant today as when it was first created.

10. Why the new format?

The original books have long been out of print, scattered across different publishers, formats, and editions. The Building a Family series brings five of them together as a unified collection, redesigned with consistent typography, layout, and high-quality printing. The photographs have been carefully restored from their original printings for sharper black-and-white reproduction, and the stories and layout have been lightly updated and re-ordered for clarity while preserving the original voices. Republication also allows the work to be presented in stunning new digital formats, such as fixed-image Kindle, beautiful to look at and widely accessible at an affordable cost.

11. Can a photography book really look good on Kindle?

Surprisingly, the answer is “yes!” We are delighted by how beautifully With This Ring and Giving Birth display on Kindle — the images are sharp, rich, and immersive. Many readers don’t realize that modern tablets and even the Kindle app on your computer or iPad can showcase black and white documentary photography with stunning clarity. While the hardcover and paperback editions offer the tactile pleasure of turning pages, the Kindle version delivers a surprisingly satisfying (and very affordable) way to experience these books.

We believe we are reinventing the photography book for the digital age — bringing museum-quality documentary images to readers on their state-of-the art devices. Our fixed-layout Kindle editions preserve tonal nuance and page design while adding the benefits of digital — crisp zoom, effortless navigation, instant global access, and pricing that invites discovery. The result is a contemporary way for a new audience to experience classic human stories with ease, and without compromising artistic integrity.

12. What does it mean to say Mary’s work is “timeless”?

When we call this work timeless, we mean that the experiences it documents—falling in love, building a marriage, giving birth, adopting a child, raising teenagers, confronting racism, facing joys and tragedies, growing old—will always be part of the human story across every generation. The photographs and voices may come from 30, 40, even 50 years ago, but the emotions they reveal—joy, fear, anguish, resilience, tenderness—are immediately recognizable today. These books are about the timeless journey of what it means to form and live within a family, not about a particular moment in history.

13. Can I buy the books?

 Absolutely. The titles in the five-volume Building a Family series are becoming available from August through December 2025 in paperback, hardcover and eBook formats. Volume I – With This Ring: A Portrait of Marriage, and Volume II – Giving Birth are already available in limited formats.  And you’ll soon be able to find them at your favorite independent bookstore, or online.

14. Are there exhibits, events or more books planned?

Yes. Several new books are in the works, and a 50-Year Retrospective Exhibition is being planned along with author events, podcast interviews, and gallery appearances. Stay tuned here or sign up for Mary’s newsletter to get word on upcoming dates.

15. I’m a podcaster/journalist/event host. Can I book Mary for an interview or appearance?

Please reach out to her contact@atelerixpress.com for media inquiries, bookings, and promotional materials. She’ll get back to you promptly.