Rooted: A Family Story Series Featuring the Istanto Family

Exploring Family, Culture, and Heritage 🌱

I’m so excited to kick off the Rooted family photography series with the Istanto family. Hedy, the mom, is my childhood friend. My earliest memory of us was on the airplane traveling to Indonesia with our parents together when we were 5 or 6yo. And then off course the countless sleepovers imagining our weddings with one of the 3T members. Having her visit me here in Spain with her family after a long time not seeing each other was really special. I’ve watched Micah grow from a baby into a teenager, and now photographing this chapter of their lives feels like an honor.

“We’ve always been raised with the notion that there’s another place on this earth we consider our second home”

A Family Between Two Homes: Netherlands and Indonesia

Everyone in the Istanto family is born and raised in the Netherlands, but Indonesia is also a home where their roots run deep. “We’ve always been raised with the notion that there’s another place on this earth we consider home: Indonesia” Hedy told me. Even far from Indonesia, you can feel it in how they live. The table is always full, Sunday breakfasts are long and relaxed and Friday or Saturday nights are spent together playing board games or watching movies. It made me think about how much family and culture shape our everyday lives, even when our lives look very different than our ancestors’.

Family, Love, and Everyday Life

This family isn’t perfect, and they don’t pretend to be. They fight, they make up, they hug a lot, and they laugh even more. Hedy said it simply: “We might fight, but we always make up. We’ll never stop loving each other.” Seeing how they navigate their daily lives, the small rituals, the jokes, the hugs, made me realize that love and family values aren’t just ideas, they’re practices we choose to live every day.

Thinking About Roots

Photographing them also made me reflect on my own family and heritage. How do my roots shape the way I live? Which traditions do I carry forward, and which do I leave behind? Their family’s story is a reminder that our sense of home is bigger than one place. It’s the people, the memories, and the cultures that travel with us.

Join Me on the Rooted Journey

With Rooted, I want to capture families like this: how they live, how they love, and how their roots stretch across countries and generations. And I hope it inspires you to think about your own roots, too. The Istanto family’s story is just the beginning, and I can’t wait to share more stories.

What do your roots look like?