Father and Son

JOSH, Santa Barbara, California, 1976
Black and white photograph created with 120 film, 20” x 20”, Artist’s Collection

Josh, another young boy, is at home studiously doing his homework, as if he were not wearing a mask. I’m a close friend of Josh’s whole family. He wears the T-shirt of the Sacramento Kings, a professional basketball team. In his mask and T-shirt, he’s the King of his backyard. The frowning mask on Josh looks so familiar, one I’ve worn throughout my life as a student and scholar. It provides privacy and distance. It also allows people to keep working through all the noise that calls them out, demanding they reveal themselves even when they chose not to.

SHERIDAN, New York City, 2024
Digital color print, 20” x 20”,
Artist’s Collection

Sheridan, Josh’s father, is my mentor and friend from Santa Barbara. He’s an English Education Professor and writer. Fifty years ago he guided me in writing my doctoral dissertation. He lives in New York, and although now 50 years older, keeps working with his doctoral students on completing their dissertations. Sheridan, like Josh, attends to his writing task seemingly unaware of the mask or the photographer. Although he uses a pen, Sheridan is fluent in the technologies of computers and iPhones. He’s very open-minded and childlike. Seeing Sheridan in the smiley mask feels light and playful, and yet it also reminds me of my mortality. Although younger than Sheridan, I’m fully retired from the hoods and gowns of academic life. And even as I push to complete unfinished business, I’m aware that the biological clock is ticking.