Then & now: How to tell generational stories through photo books
1 Oct 2025 | 5 min read
Then & now: How to tell generational stories through photo books
Photo by Los Muertos Crew
Mixbook’s photo books are made for storytelling, and there are few stories as important as the collective, multi-generational memories shared by your family. Stories from before you were born. Childhood bloopers just slightly embellished over time. The life lessons held most dearly by your family’s elders. Fish stories. Funny stories. Milestones, celebrations, and the shared rituals of everyday life.
Preserving your favorite stories in a family photo book means they can be revisited and enjoyed again and again by all generations—even future generations. A photo book focusing on generational stories is a heartfelt project with enormous rewards. Revisit favorite photos, share the stories behind the pictures, and capture their emotional resonance. Here are some fun ideas for preserving your family legacy with photo books.
There’s a good chance that every single member of your family has their earliest baby photo saved somewhere. Bring them all together in a special multi-generational baby photo spread. It makes a delightful and intriguing content idea for a family photo book. You’ll be able to see which family members looked alike as babies, and also debate who was the cutest!
This kind of photo collection calls for informative captions. Write each baby’s name, date of birth, and birthplace under the photo. You could arrange thumbnail photos in a grid format with short captions underneath, in the style of a yearbook page. Or, scatter the pics across the page like a freeform collage. How about overlaying the baby pics on a custom map to show every family member’s birthplace? You might also design separate pages for the maternal and paternal lines of your family and arrange the photos in the structure of a family tree.
Grandparents + grandkids
Family photo books dedicated just to beloved grandparents are a popular choice. You can also dedicate a page, spread, or section of a broader family book to photos of grandparents with their grandkids. Make a layout showing the grandparents with their first, then second, then third e.t.c. grandchild, or the brood of grandkids getting bigger and bigger.
Find photos of grandparents and grandchildren enjoying time together, sharing pastimes, and passing along family traditions. Examples include baking holiday cookies with Grandma, fishing with Grandad, babysitting adventures, and memorable outings together.
Multi-generational milestones
Major milestones like weddings, graduations, baptisms, and bar mitzvahs are all wonderful reasons for extended family get-togethers and celebrations. So are birthday parties, family reunions, and baby showers. These are also prime photo opportunities—and often the only chance to take photos of multiple generations all together.
For your family photo book, consider creating special spreads around particular milestones. Put the kids’, parents’ and grandparents’ graduation ceremony pics all in a row, with their new credentials listed underneath. Bring together everyone’s “just married” portrait from their wedding day. If your family passed down a shared wedding ritual, such as wearing the same veil or necklace, show this beautiful connection in side-by-side photos.
New takes on old photos
A really fun photo trend online is to recreate childhood photos as adults and place the two pics side by side. The more accurate the recreation the better, so try to replicate the same pose, background, clothing, hairstyle, props e.t.c. as closely as possible. Take the new photograph from the same angle and distance (you might need to crop it with editing tools later). It’s even better if you can take the new photo in the same place as the original.
The most hilarious versions of this photo idea put fully grown adults in child-like arrangements. For example, a photo of a little girl holding her baby brother is now a petite woman being squashed under her now-much-bigger bro. These photo re-dos can also be sweet and emotional. Grandma as a gorgeous teenager and now as a mature, gray-haired lady in the same kind of jeans and T-shirt combo look so different, yet so much the same—the same grin, the same sparkle in her eye.
Things we share
Think about all the things that have been shared and passed down from one generation to the next in your family. Favorite recipes, songs, sayings, old wives’ tales, special skills or crafts, and beloved hobbies are just some examples.
Maybe every kid had to take piano lessons from the same neighbor lady, or no teen was allowed to drive a car until they proved they knew how to change a tire. You all spent summers swimming and fishing at the same lake, or planted a rose bush for every new baby born into the family. Gather photos that represent these shared experiences and preserve them in your photo book.
Holidays are often times when all the generations of the family come together, share and pass along traditions, and take tons of photos. Create photo spreads around each major holiday that your family celebrates, featuring pics that span all the decades.
Personalize the spreads with notes about quirky traditions or rituals, such as the annual “cousins’ night out” on Christmas Eve, the weirdly good cheese ball spider thing someone has to make every Halloween, or your New Year’s Eve game night extravaganzas.
Along with preserving your family’s legacy, a family memory photo book is the perfect holiday gift idea. Order copies in bulk and cross just about everyone off your list in one swoop!
