Exploring African-American FatherhoodPosted in Articles, Arts, Asian Diaspora, Family/Parenting, Media Archive, United States on 2013-07-24 18:04Z by Steven |
Exploring African-American Fatherhood
The New York Times
Lens: Photography, Video and Visual Journalism
2012-06-15
David Gonzalez, Co-editor of Lens
What compels you to shoot? That was the question David Alan Harvey asked his students during a workshop last year in Brooklyn. We all have our reasons — if not our obsessions — flashes of realization that come through the viewfinder and into our hearts. For Zun Lee, one of the students, the answer was uneasily evident.
As a street photographer, he had always been attracted to fleeting scenes of fathers and children. He was drawn to those moments, even if he wasn’t quite sure why.
Well, maybe he was.
“In 2004, I discovered my biological dad was African-American,” said Mr. Lee, who had been raised in a Korean family in Germany. “It had basically been a one-night stand. He ran away when he learned she was pregnant. She doesn’t even remember his name anymore.”
That revelation would inform his latest work — “Father Figure,” an exploration into the lives of black fathers. Working over the last year in New York, Chicago and Toronto, where he now lives and works as a health consultant, he has delved into the lives of men who have made the choice to stay near their children as best they can…
…“Learning about my biological father wasn’t just a traumatic experience,” Mr. Lee said. “Learning the news was in a weird sense a homecoming.”…
Read the entire article here.