IT was in Kenya, on an assignment photographing Masai mothers and children, where I was struck by the power of the familiar and the mundane.

By then I had spent most of the last 20 years working as a journalist, photographing everything from street battles in the West Bank to meetings of world leaders.

But over a couple of weeks in Kenya in 2014, amid the rugged landscape and the cattle-herding families, I began to wonder: Why did I think mothers here were worthy of being documented and not the mothers in my own community? Why is the remote more valuable to a photographer than the world right around them?

I realized I had turned a blind eye to the complex story right next to me: in the school runs, the trips to the store, the swimming lessons and the countless birthday parties. It is the world I navigate every day with my two young sons. Every couple of days, for instance, we stop at the supermarket, and there’s the battle to get the boys into the shopping cart. I take them through the aisles and navigate my options: Shreddies? Cheerios? The store brand? My thoughts crisscross with the shouts of brothers tugging at each other and at what they can grab from the shelves. I started to ask myself: Should this be forgotten? Isn’t this worthy of being photographed?