Alfredo Gonzalez and son Jahlil. Bronx, NY, 2011.
Alfredo Gonzalez and son Jahlil. Bronx, NY, 2011. Photograph by Zun Lee
Story Summary:
Father Figure counters the persistent myth of the absent Black father by documenting the quiet, daily realities of African American men and their children. In a cultural landscape often fragmented by polarizing narratives, this project rejects statistical distortions in favor of the ordinary.
From 2011 to 2018, Zun Lee immersed himself in various families across the United States and Canada to witness and document routine, unglamorous moments - braiding hair, navigating bedtime, playing in parks, and comforting toddlers. Building these close-knit, trusted relationships helped Lee reclaim his personal experience with paternal absence and presence.
Collectively, the work reframes a conversation around Black fatherhood that remains trapped in reductive tropes and social media memes. The images do not romanticize or overcompensate. Instead, they focus on the texture of the everyday, stripping away decades of media bias through steady, lived representation. By centering the unremarkable yet vital labor of daily caregiving, the work resists the divisive rhetoric that weaponizes family structures to alienate communities. It anchors the exhibition's themes not in political abstraction, but in the tangible spaces of American household life.
