Last week, Unboxed: Black Fathers Are Present opened at The Alex House Project in downtown Brooklyn, a nonprofit that supports young parents as they navigate the realities of parenting, work, housing, and everyday life.
The people who came to the opening started talking about fathers.
They talked about being fathers. About their own fathers. About what fathers had meant in their lives. About the ways fatherhood has changed—and about how ideas of masculinity have changed along with it.
We all felt that something is different now. That being a father no longer has to mean fitting into one narrow idea of what a man is supposed to be. There is more room for tenderness, presence, affection, vulnerability, and simply being there.
That conversation is very much at the heart of Dáreece Walker’s Unboxed: Black Fathers Are Present. The photographs push back against the familiar images of Black fatherhood as absent or disengaged by showing something much more ordinary and much more powerful: fathers with their children. Present. Loving. Involved.
And the exhibition looks beautiful at The Alex House Project.
Over the next few weeks, young parents will walk past these photographs on their way to meetings and appointments. They’ll see fathers holding children, fathers playing, fathers simply being with their kids. They may stop and look. They may recognize themselves. They may think about their own fathers.
This is our mission. Gallery Particulier brings exhibitions outside the traditional gallery setting, reaching people where they are.
Unboxed: Black Fathers Are Present is now on view at The Alex House Project.
Feel free to visit from 11am to 4pm Mon – Fri 9 Bond St, 4th Fl