Wearing matching Hawaiian shirts and brandishing light sabers, Michelle Gohlinghorst and three relatives marched into the J.C. Penney portrait studio in White Marsh Mall one recent Sunday.

They had come for a photo shoot, but their goal was not to look attractive, polished or natural — it was to look awkward.

The 45-year-old Gohlinghorst, her husband, his brother and his brother’s wife contorted themselves into a series of uncomfortable poses. Leaning on each other’s backs like a series of dominoes. Back-to-back with crossed arms. Hands in each other’s pockets, light sabers raised.

Far from surprised, the J.C. Penney staff was in on the joke; they’ve been fielding equally wacky requests all season. Intentionally awkward photos have been a low-level trend for years, but demand has skyrocketed this winter, said Kim Iafolla, manager of the J.C. Penney studio in White Marsh.

“It’s at least one-fourth of our sessions every day,” she said.

Before the turn of the century, this was how family photos worked: You put on scratchy matching outfits, headed to a portrait studio and stood in uncomfortable poses while your mother — through gritted teeth— ordered you to smile.

When high-quality digital cameras became widely available in the early 2000s, many folks, especially women, launched businesses photographing weddings and family portraits. The photos were infinitely better than those taken in most mall studios. They were a little pricier, but to people who felt the photos captured the essence of their loved ones, they were priceless.

Soon it seemed nearly every family’s holiday card included photos of them romping gleefully through a field of russet colored grasses, glowing in a halo of winter light.

But sometimes you just want a photo to make you laugh. Sometimes you scroll through Awkward Family Photos and look at 1990s photos of children lying in a pinwheel-shaped pile with their siblings and think, “We should do that.”

At least that’s been the trend on TikTok, Reddit and other social media sites over this holiday season and last.

J.C. Penney has leaned into it by offering a “Festive Flashback” package that enables you to add a double exposure to your photos, e.g. a face floating off in the distance. And customers are choosing vintage clothes to match the retro poses.

Some customers wear muumuus and wigs, a la Mrs. Roper from “Three’s Company.” Others sport garish neon windbreakers and boom boxes. Some elect for an understated early ’90s Calvin Klein look in black turtlenecks and jeans.

“You think of it; we’ve done it,” said Iafolla.

Perhaps the awkward photo trend is not surprising given our current obsessions with all things ’90s and, frankly, unflattering styles. Kids are streaming reruns of “Full House” and “Friends.” Mullets, pleats and billowing blue jeans have returned. Moo Deng is a cultural icon. Heck, even Pantone just chose chopped liver (well, that is, Mocha Mousse) as the color of the year.

Old school disposable cameras are back. Photo booths are back. It makes sense that portrait studios are also coming back in vogue.

For members of Generation X, Millennials and geriatric Gen-Zers, there’s a nostalgia associated with portrait studios, a fixture of department stores and shopping centers in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.

Maria Linz O’Brien, a lifestyle photographer from Timonium, found herself researching the poses popularized by these studios in preparation for a photography session last month with a group of siblings in their 30s, the Rosenthals.

Usually O’Brien, 41, works to ensure that her clients look natural in photos, capturing a bride’s delighted laughter, a child’s mischievous grin or a family playing in a pasture. But this time her clients wanted the opposite, seeking to recreate the photos of their youth to make a calendar for their parents. (Hey Smalltimore, if you know their parents, please don’t ruin the surprise.)

O’Brien turned her living room into a portrait studio, clearing out furniture and hauling up lights. The siblings arrived in coordinated black sweaters and jeans, ready to contort themselves into positions that were probably a lot easier as children.

They lay on the floor, heads stacked on top of each other. They stood in wheelbarrow position, holding a sibling’s angles. The two sisters stood behind a chair where the youngest brother cuddled on the eldest brother’s lap. One sister crawled on the floor and the other sat on her back.

“We were laughing the whole time,” O’Brien said. “I almost peed my pants.”

Adam Kempler, a grocery store manager from Annapolis, hired a lifestyle photographer for an awkward photo shoot with his then-girlfriend in 2021. And there was a twist: Kempler wanted to propose in the middle of the shoot.

Kempler, 36, knew his girlfriend shared his sense of humor. Each had posed for silly Christmas portraits alone before they met. “We’re the same kind of stupid,” he said.

So to prepare for the photo, Kempler cut his hair in a mullet and put on an ugly Christmas sweater. His girlfriend wore gold lamé leggings and layers of bright eye shadow.

“The last thing I clearly remember was him saying my full name,” said Kate Kempler, an attorney, who, of course, said yes. “And there I was wearing a Peg Bundy shirt and my hair was teased up to the gods.”

She immediately dialed up her mom, who was in on the plan. “I said, ‘You let me get engaged in gold leggings?’ ” Kempler, 39, recalled, laughing.

For Molissa Farber and Yong Taing, posing for awkward photos in September was also a seminal moment in their relationship.

Farber, 40, an attorney, took Taing, 44, a Space Telescope Science Institute employee, to Goodwill and asked him to pick out silly clothes for her while she did the same for him.

When the couple arrived at J.C. Penney in White Marsh with their outfits, including a floppy straw hat for Taing, the photographer knew just what to do. “She said, ‘Oh, are you here to do the ironic thing?’” Farber recalled.

The photographer coached them through a number of silly poses — crouched holding hands, leaning back, lying on the floor, chins resting on hands — then suggested the couple peer into Taing’s hat. “We said, ‘That sounds terrible! Let’s do it,’ ” Farber said.

The couple, who got engaged a few weeks later, laughed through the whole shoot. They felt no pressure to look good, Farber said. And maybe that’s the magic of the whole thing.

“Even though we look ridiculous, every time I look at those photos I think of how much fun it was to do that together,” she said. “I will treasure these.”