Suzanne Heintz, a photographer and art director from Denver, Colorado, has spent more than a decade travelling America and Europe with her husband, Chauncey, and daughter, Mary Margaret, documenting their domestic bliss in a series of touching, intimate portraits.

Here's Chauncey and Suzanne reading the paper over breakfast. And here's Suzanne kissing Mary Margaret goodnight. An ordinary enough set of photos, you might think, except for one deeply eccentric fact: Chauncey and Mary Margaret are mannequins, a plastic family Heintz bought from a shop before it closed and has since carted from country to country in suitcases.

Suzanne Heintz, poses with her imitation husband and child atop the Rocky Mountains. Credit:Suzanne Heintz

But there is method in the seeming madness of all the staged Christmases, birthdays and holidays. Heintz is making a serious point about the pressure women still experience to conform to a life of marriage and motherhood. She says the questions began in her early 30s. Why wasn't she married yet? Didn't she want children? Did she realise her eggs wouldn't last forever?

"It came to a head one Christmas," she says, "when I was complaining to my mom about a boyfriend I'd just broken up with. She said, 'Suzy, nobody's perfect. You're just going to have to pick someone if you want to settle down.' I went through the roof. I said, 'I can't just make this happen, Mom! It's not like I can go out and buy a family.' "