BOY WONDER: THE POSSIBILITY OF A CHILDHOOD

This personal glimpse into the first 30 months of the life of our son offers a meditation on wonder, joy, curiosity and childhood, and the images testify to the privileges afforded to a white middle-class child born into post-modern materialist culture.

Documentary photography focuses on suffering and injustice:  deprivation, disease, loss, addiction, and violence prevail, and it is essential to document stolen childhoods.  Documentary portraits of thriving children are less common.  

Child abuse and addictions reach epidemic proportions in Western societies, coupled with the pathology(s) of whiteness, so this is also a commentary on our attempt at an inclusive conscious parenting.  

Photos speak to the gifts that we seek to give this child: e.g. safety, security, health, freedom, awareness, curiosity, warmth, nourishment, adventure, confidence, self-assurance, wonder, sanctuary, dreams, abundance, compassion, consciousness, and an enhanced capacity for communication and being.

These comprise a nurtured, safe, fulfilling childhood, with healthy developmental opportunities, and are basic human rights for all children.  I would like to think that they are the foundations of a conscious mature compassionate expansive humanity.