Father's Day Surprise

by Auntie Cathie
(Chicago IL USA)

The Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) has an exhibit of more than 20 of Lewis Kostiner's photographs from the series entitled Choosing Fatherhood. For Father's Day this year, my dad and I would meet at the chocolate store we often call home. Each year, the week before this holiday, we plan these solitary excursions for the sake of the quality time together that cannot be had at home with so many of my eleven siblings still in residence there. We do share the planning yet this year I was able to keep my surprise to myself to the very last minute. We had finished our luscious drinks and I directed him upstairs to this pointed display.

The other displays at this time speak of the Fatherhood of God for the Jewish people since the days of their leaving Egypt, and the way Chagall made a lifetime work out of illustrations of the Scripture stories. In this context the Kostiner's photographs taken all across the nation image the situation of fatherhood in these changing time. While we moved quickly through these larger exhibits they really primed the pump and help us to focus on the gift given in the hallway around the main gallery rooms.

Kostiner has assembled the images in a book entitled Choosing Fatherhood – A Second Chance which illustrates the connectedness that fathers have with their children. It has reached the top ten in books of art just recently. Notables added their comments as text in the book presentation: Juan Williams, David Travis, Shipra S. Parikh, and Roland C Warren. The book size photos, don't have the intense power of the 11 inch by 17inch ones mounted along the hallway. Outdoor shots of a dad and his son centered at a Kansas landscape are shown next to a father holding the family picture with his albeit older wife and children from Seattle Washington. There are too many photos to mention each one, but together my dad and I will tell each other what we see and feel about this important work.

The National Fatherhood Institute help supported Kostiner's research from their offices in Germantown Maryland. Their website is a treasure trove of information to support and encourage fathers to choose Fatherhood for their children's sake. When Dad and I had talked ourselves blue we would likely return for a second hot chocolate before heading our separate directions after this Father's Day surprise.