Fathers

The artists-book Fathers focuses on the relationship between a father and his child. In an attempt to search for the essence in this relationship, Verena Winkelmann has pursued seventy-three fathers with their infants, resulting in nearly 20.000 photographs taken during the course of four years (2009-2013).

Fathers presents a selection of twenty-one pictures. In the book you see fathers cuddling and pausing and you see fathers experiencing the intimate skin-to-skin contact. Despite endless literature on the new role of the father, largely from an autobiographical perspective, the visual representation of this newly emerging fathers role has hitherto been almost absent.

The project Fathers is to be seen as an essay: as a photographic rumination, where the intention is not to provide unequivocal answers or create new icons. Rather it is a question of getting closer to the people and the stories that are behind the public debates and of engaging with the obvious.

Clothbound hardcover with silkscreen title
Edition of 600
2016