Photographer Bart Heynen set out across the untry to make a visual archive of gay fatherhood "Dads."
Contents:
- THE GAY FATHER I NEVER KNEW
- MOVG PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERS WH THEIR FAI ACROSS AMERI
- I'M GAY, MY DAD'S A PASTOR, AND ... WE'RE WORKG ON IT
THE GAY FATHER I NEVER KNEW
A gay doctor wh the body of a Greek god relled the moment he stripped off his special Mormon unrwear and walked away om the church a movg Instagram post. I also knew that my dad mt be gay—bee, well, of urse. While I’d never met an out gay man, I kd of knew what they were supposed to be like om movi and TV, and Dad f the mold: He loved to ok; he cleaned obssively; he kept the Internatnal Male talog around, bee, he said, “I like the cloth.
MOVG PORTRAS OF GAY FATHERS WH THEIR FAI ACROSS AMERI
“You know, ” I said to Dad, “I asked Mom once if you were gay. “Gay?
“I’m not gay. ” she’d said our kchen—after a long nversatn she’d had wh an openly gay iend om llege, Pat, who had, apparently, been a nfidant of Dad’s.
Years later Mom told me that, acrdg to Pat, Dad had been active Lexgton and Louisville’s gay club scene. ) But to actually let me —to s on that blue blanket, look me the eye and tell me he was gay—was somethg he uldn’t do.
I'M GAY, MY DAD'S A PASTOR, AND ... WE'RE WORKG ON IT
“I asked Mom once if you were gay, ” I would have said.
Such a photograph would have been extraordarily rare jt s ago, but now is one of many published the book “Dads, ” a four-year visual archive of gay fatherhood across Ameri that began 2016. “I felt a ltle b lonely as a gay dad – although there are two of – but lonely the sense that all the other fai I knew were straight parents, ” Heynen said a vio ll, explag why he began photographg the seri.
“I also thought was important for (my kids) to see other fai wh gay dads.