@joshuacogan

It has been easy for me to photograph and reflect on the beauty of motherhood in my partner over the past few years, yet I’ve been less inclined to see the tenderness of fatherhood in myself. I made this portrait a few months ago to help me in my own process of honoring this fleeting period, knowing that I had many images of my partner but very few of myself with our children. After the first, I realized how quick it moves. Part of my own longing here was to witness in myself the love and tenderness that is called forth from me at this time during a transition that at times armored me up from being hammered with fear. Fear of being enough, of making enough, of losing the things I love, and of seeing the world in so much suffering. The modern culture holds very few rites of passage to witness us as we navigate paths into different periods of life, and so something has felt important for me about really acknowledging this process. For my own journey of being, there is nothing that has changed me so fundamentally. As true love has often called me to do, it called me to reckon with my wounds, and release much of what I believed to be true. The unflinching eye of a little one, unjaded by cynicism, self consciousness, or weariness of the world can look right into you and invite you to transformation. It can test your integrity in any place where there might be space between your values and your way of being. I accept this work and am grateful for it. To my fathers and brothers out there, I see you and I love you. To our little teachers, thank you.