We have all been there in our own childhood -- stationed in front of the inescapable camera and staring into its inscrutable eye -- long before we ever got around in back of it. So the topic of this book should be familiar to us all. And yet familiarity can breed complacency. We grownups take more pictures of children than of anything else; still we manage to miss, all too often, the excitement, the emotion, the infinite diversity that is there for the taking.

The aim of this book is to open up the reader's eyes and mind anew to the whole complex and fascinating subject of photographing children. The great cliché pictures are here, sturdy representatives of all the tried-and-true approaches that worked a century ago and frequently work today. The how-to-do-it pictures are here, spelling out the techniques of recording the expanding life and personality of the child, from the brand new baby to the teenager. The creative, innovating pictures are e here too, proving that the subject is broad and deep enough to challenge the with and imagination -- and, above all, the heart -- of any photographer.

The real authors of the volume are not the editors who wrote the explanatory text, useful as we hope it is, but the scores of photographers whose work with children is represented in the pictures. Many of these photographers are accomplished professionals whose own children have put their parents' skills to the test. The results, and all the funny and sad, dramatic and quiet interactions between child and camera that the pictures on these pages disclose, speak louder than any words.