“Ultimately, I began to understand ‘Fathers’ in a different way.
It began to feel almost like an archival project — the archiving of our humanity.
Because when future generations, or civilizations look back, if they look at our media, our newspapers, what will they know of us? Will they know that we, black folks, black fathers in this case, lived and loved?”
— Robyn Price Pierre, editor of FATHERS
FATHERS Volume 1
Fathers, Volume 1 is a 423-page book featuring images from the personal archives of the men represented in its pages. Composed of photos taken primarily on their mobile phones, Fathers explores the complexity and beauty of their lives as seen through their own lens. It is a testament to the power of shaping one's own narrative—of being seen—despite invisibility in mainstream media and elsewhere.
For the Culture
“If the question is what fatherhood looks like today, here is the answer.
A book of images shot mostly with a telephone.
It is a project with intention.” - GQ Italia
Excerpt from the book FATHERS
“…his fathering was a game of beating the clock, trying to inscribe as much wisdom in into his son’s mind as he could before he was ‘called home,’ as his people down in Georgia would say. This sense of fragility, the mortal awareness of the passing hours, is common among us.
We know—we cannot help but know—that the lives of black men in this country die in the most arbitrary and unpredictable ways.
Thus to us, the word ‘father’ connotes an act of profound optimism. Defiance.”
- Jelani Cobb, historian
"This collection is an act of profound optimism. Defiance.
A collection of our varied, beautiful selves, a rendering of us, colored by wisdom, by strength, by worry, by devotion, by allegiance. By love. We contain multitudes. Our lives are more varied, our testaments more profound, our relationships deeper and more vital that the lazy beliefs projected onto us. We know this in the deepest, most intimate corners of ourselves, no matter the outside world, no matter the caricatures projected onto the blank screens of people's minds. The word "father," when modified by the adjective "black," equals this: as complex, beautiful and profound a word as we suspected all along."
— Jelani Cobb
(excerpt from the introduction of Fathers)
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