These Beautiful Photos Show How Similar Motherhood Is All Over The World. It’s Quite Incredible.

Ken Heyman, a renowned and award-winning people photographer, recently uncovered a nearly forgotten treasure in storage – a box labeled “Mothers” that had a beautiful series of images that he shot of mothers around the world nearly 50 years ago.

The 83-year-old photographer shot the images for Family, a book that he co-authored with renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead in 1965. Margaret Mead had been his professor at first, but they later wound up working together on this and other books and projects. Their anthropological collaboration is apparent in the images, as they document motherhood around the world, not just from any one culture’s perspective.