Museum Exhibit Showcases ‘Most Awkward Family Photos Ever’

A traveling museum exhibit is hilariously showcasing the “most awkward family photos ever” taken.

For over a decade, AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com has posted more than 9,000 of the most outlandish, cringeworthy, and downright bizarre photos shared by families across the U.S — becoming an internet sensation in the process.

Now, the beloved website — that compiles the very best of the worst family portraits — has its its very own museum exhibit that is traveling across the country.

Awkward Family Photos The Exhibition — which is currently on display in The Columbus Museum in Georgia — features over 200 painfully funny family portraits from the website’s collection.

The exhibition, curated by the creators of AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com, also includes amusing backstories from the actual families in the photographs and what inspired them to take these truly strange portraits together.

Awkward Family Photos The Exhibition celebrates the perfectly imperfect moments that come with the family experience and provides a place for people to take comfort in the fact that their family is not alone,” the creators explain.

The exhibit is a celebration of poor wardrobe and hairstyle choices, inappropriate poses among siblings and backgrounds, and photo props that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Alongside classic family portraits, the exhibit also features bizarre vacation photos, wedding pictures, and pet shots among other images.

Awkward Family Photos The Exhibition opened to record attendance at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on June 17, 2012 and has been traveling ever since. Right now, it is on view in the temporary quarters of The Columbus Museum through January 7.

“We’re just so glad to see people coming in and laughing and reminiscing, and going, ‘Oh, this reminds me of this picture,’ or even just a story of something that happened in their own family,” The Columbus museum’s curator of history and exhibitions manager Rebecca Bush tells Fox5Atlanta.

Childhood friends Mike Bender and Doug Chernack began the AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com blog in May 2009. The pair were inspired to create the website after Bender saw an awkward vacation photo hung in his parents’ house. Realizing there were probably plenty of other people out there with their own awkward family images, the two friends decided to create a friendly place where everyone could come together and share their uncomfortable family moments.

The authors started by posting a few of their own childhood photos and those provided by friends. The site quickly took off and became an online hit sensation.

Image credits: All photos via AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com