ZEKE Magazine: Spring 2022

DADS
By Bart Heynen
powerHouse Books, 2021
152 pages | $50
Ever since 2015, when same-sex
marriage became legal across
the U.S., we've witnessed a baby
boom in the gay community. Through
adoption or the help of surrogates and
egg donors, gay men are able to make
their dream come true and start a family
of their own.
Dads is a journey into gay fatherhood
in the United States. The daily lives of
more than 40 families are portrayed by
Belgian photographer Bart Heynen in
this beautifully printed collection. As the
babies grow into adults and the fathers
grow older throughout the book, we are
reminded that families come in many
different sizes, colors, and shapes. To say
it in the words of Harvey Fierstein: ‘Love,
commitment, and family are not heterosexual
experiences, not heterosexual
words, they are human words and they
belong to all people.’
“A stunning portrait of dads with their
babies…The looks and gazes on the
faces of both the babies and dads is spot
on—a mixture, of curiosity and pride.”
—Martin Parr
AS WE RISE: Photography
from the Black Atlantic
By The Wedge Collection. Preface by
Teju Cole. Introduction by Mark Sealy.
Interviewer Liz Ikiriko.
Aperture, 2021 | 184 pages | $50
As We Rise presents an exciting
compilation of photographs
from African diasporic culture.
With over one hundred works by Black
artists from Canada, the Caribbean,
Great Britain, the United States, South
America, as well as throughout the
African continent, this volume provides
a timely exploration of Black identity on
both sides of the Atlantic.
As Teju Cole describes in his preface,
“Too often in the larger culture, we see
images of Black people in attitudes of
despair, pain, or brutal isolation. As
We Rise gently refuses that. It is not that
people are always in an attitude of celebration—no,
that would be a reverse but
corresponding falsehood—but rather that
they are present as human beings, credible,
fully engaged in their world.” Drawn
from Dr. Kenneth Montague’s Wedge
Collection in Toronto—a Black-owned
collection dedicated to artists of African
descent—As We Rise looks at the multifaceted
ideas of Black life through the
lenses of community, identity, and power.
Artists such as Stan Douglas, LaToya
Ruby Frazier, Barkley L. Hendricks, Texas
Isaiah, Liz Johnson Artur, Seydou Keïta,
Deana Lawson, Jamel Shabazz, and
Carrie Mae Weems, touch on themes of
agency, beauty, joy, belonging, subjectivity,
and self-representation. Writings by
Isolde Brielmaier, Ugochukwu-Smooth C.
Nzewi, Mark Sealy, Teka Selman, and
Deborah Willis among others provide
insight and commentary on this monumental
collection.
DISCLOSURE – RWANDAN
CHILDREN BORN OF RAPE
By Jonathan Torgovnik
Akaaka Art Publishing, 2020
114 pages | $50
There have been studies of the
effects of conflict based rape on
women, but no one has studied
the effects on the children born of that
type of brutal and violent rape. Jonathan
Torgovnik’s new book Disclosure:
Rwandan Children Born of Rape
attempts that. During the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda, women were brutalized by
soldiers using rape as a weapon of war
and almost 20,000 children were born
as a result of these rapes, a fact kept
from them for a long time.
Torgovnik wanted to explore the
multi-generational impact of being
born of genocidal rape so he returned
to Rwanda in 2018 during the 25th
anniversary of the genocide to revisit
some of the families he had interviewed
and photographed in 2006 for his first
book, Intended Consequences: Rwandan
Children Born of Rape. This time he interviewed
both mothers and children —now
young adults who know the circumstances
of their birth. Together, the interviews
and pairs of images— portraits of mother
and child and individual portraits of the
children, one current and the original
from 2006—uncover a difficult reality of
deep trauma and the effects of genocide
but also a story of hope and forgiveness
and fragility and strength.
ZEKE SPRING 2022/ 61