Awkward Family Photos: A Museum?

Matching mother and child poodle hairdos. A goth on the beach. Screaming kids.

They're included among more than 200 cringe- and laugh-worthy photos going on exhibit this week in Peoria, Illinois, as part of a national tour featuring awkward family photos.


The exhibit is a spinoff of the popular website, AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, founded in 2009 by two longtime friends as a place for people to share their own family photos. The website's creators, Michael Bender and Dough Chernack, organized the exhibition and provided some of the site's most famously awkward photos, the museum said.  

"Awkward Family Photos: The Exhibition" opens Tuesday at the Peoria Riverfront Museum and continues through Nov. 15.  Museum curator Kristan McKinsey says many of the photos were unintentionally awkward, shot as formal family portraits. The (Peoria) Journal Star reports that visitors will be able to take their own awkward photos and submit them to the museum's awkward family photo Facebook contest.