"It started as a thought ... when I die, there's going to be no photos of me," Justine Brentnall said. "And harsh as it is for me to say, it's true."

The thought vexed Mrs Brentnall, more so given her occupation.

In a world obsessed with images, we hide those who mean so much to us.

"A photo is a picture of something, but the real job of a photo is an entry point into memory," she said.

"When you're talking about a lifetime of someone and the intricacies of a life, you're losing a lot if you don't have little snippets."

As part of the final year of her degree she decided to find out why that was. She did six months of research and found that so many women felt the same.

"It's something not spoken about ... I found it's everywhere, there's a lot of mothers going 'oh no one takes photos of me, my funeral photo is going to be my licence photo'," she said.

Mrs Brentnall, of Wagga Wagga, put the call out and found five women who were willing to be studied and photographed.

All of the mothers had a portrait taken alongside a series of other "completely authentic" candid shots taken while they interacted with their families.

The women can be seen making a cup of tea, getting ready to go out, gardening, playing with the kids and in one instance taking a nailbar to the floorboards of a dilapidated house.

Too often women have their photo taken at an event, unnaturally posed and straining a smile, Mrs Brentnall said.

"Gatherings, birthdays, they're lined up ... It's nothing about them as a person so you learn nothing about their life," she said.

"It's just that much that they lose. The kids have got no memories of being with their mum. So, there's no trigger points for them to go 'oh I remember that day'. It was mainly about mums as the focus."

The idea of the invisible woman is nothing new, Mrs Brentnall said.

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In the early days of photography, when we wanted to picture a child, they would sit on a woman's lap to keep them calm, but the woman would often be covered by a sheet, hidden from view.

And not much has changed since.

"This popular convention .... both literally and figuratively erased motherhood to focus only on the child," she wrote in her book.

With her work she also aimed to break down popular conventions surrounding parenthood.

For example, think of how often you've seen the picture of a bloke who's dozed off on the couch, child in arms and the fawning comments that usually elicits.

Mrs Brentnall said we rarely see that image in reverse with a mother, because it's not seen as unusual.

"It's such a natural thing to see, it's unremarkable, it's nothing new, it's not photo-worthy" she said. "But she's a person, that's someone's whole life." The series had a profound effect on the mums, Mrs Brentnall said, and the reactions the women had to seeing themselves for the first time were emotional.

But she hopes it has a wider reach.

"The overall message is that if these are out there being seen it's to change the conversation. It's more about communicating an overall message that it's important to take pictures of your mother," she said