Daddy and I
Both Harlow’s Monkey and Racialicious have recently posted about Daddy and I, a photo exhibit by O. Zhang. In it, adopted Chinese girls pose with their white adoptive fathers. The series has generated much publicity, mostly centered around the uncomfortable feeling many have gotten looking at the photos. Some of the photos depict the young girls, often in traditional Chinese dress, in vaguely inappropriate positions with their fathers.
Why do these pictures make us so uneasy? If it were white adopted children with their white daughters, would we feel so uncomfortable? Or are these fathers in inappropriate positions with their daughters, regardless of race?
Furthermore, what is the artist’s role in all of this? In his director’s statement, Zhang poses the question "as the girls grow up, will they remain innocent adoptees under the tutelage of their Western patriarchs?" Did he position the fathers and daughters in deliberate situations to symbolize this question?
If art is meant to generate discussion, then this exhibit surely has accomplished its goal.
Uneasy? Uncomfortable? In my opinion,if you feel something similar looking at these pictures you don’t understand the world of adoptions and you are trapped by your owns prejudices.
The artist knew this would get a rise out of adoptive families. I also think the artist did a disservice to those children and their fathers. The artist is pushing an agenda under the disguise that people feel uncomfortable seeing asian girls and western men together. I personally feel sorry for the fathers. There are tons of pictures taken of fathers with their asian daughters that do not creep people out. I think there should be another exhibit, this time by adoptive families posting their pictures of fathers with their little girls. They will probably be of much better quality and definately better composition than these.
I would like to add to my previous comment that the photographer knew how to use the people to pose in the picture so watching the result, I can see the intention wasn’t to transmit affection or love because the girls sometimes are too serious and stiff and a professional photographer wouldn’t do that. I entirely agree with Yoli.As an adoptive father myself, I’ve got many pictures where the affection and love is transmitted better than in these pictures, where I (as an adoptive father) can see only fathers and daughters, but I know that some people can see more than that and the photographer knew that!
I don’t think that you would have felt uncomfortable if this picture was taken with 2 white daughters in the same position. If you see a problem with that picture, it is because you are trapped in your own “white” prejudices. I am an asian adoptee and in my “white” world, I have heard enough of comments or jokes to know that many white men imagine asian girls as their geisha (I’m also trapped in the “white” prejudice because my inside is white, so that picture also made me uncomfortable but because of my yellow outside,it made me sad) My white daddy had said to me several times that “Guys all want to check if asian girls have their vagina slit in the wrong way, so don’t worry, you will have a boy friend some day”
On the contrary of José Luis, I say that the photographer understands the world of interracial adoptions more deeply than most of people. Most people are trapped by their owns prejudices and they think that adoption is only about “care, hugs, love, gratitude”; publicities of the adoption agencies only show this aspect of adoption. But adoption is not only “care, hugs, love, gratitude”, it is also “loss, rejection, sorrow, pain” and when we talk about Int. adoption (interracial adoption), sometime we can add more sorrow and more pain, sometime we can add abuses. My white dad has abused of me when I was kid but he has never abused of any of his 5 birth children. I know that it was OK for him to abuse me even if I was a child because I was not blood related to him. Recently, I heard in a local news that statistically, there is more abuses in the recomposed families;I wonder what the statistics would show in the families of interraciale adoption. I have never talked about the abuses before my adulthood and I’m only starting to share more about my story with my friends or in virtual world; knowing that many victims of abuses will keep secret of the abuses all their life, probably that statistics will show a wrong pourcentage.
Get out of your own prejudices if you think that adoption is only about “care, hugs, love, gratitude”.
Kim, I understand your attitude to these pictures. If you have been a victim of abuse you will see the photos in a different way. I understand it and I am so sorry. It is very sad what you say…
You can be sure that I know that adoption is not only “care, hugs, love, gratitude
To answer to the reply of José Luis, I “undertand” the point of view I had when I was child… When I was child, I never asked to be shipped to America, I didn’t aske to be adopted by white parents. My white daddy only started abusing me on my 3rd year: my white parents were good with me during my 2 first years with them; life was like in a fairy tale but only after few weeks in America, I wanted go to back to the orphanage to be with my friends. My childhood’s point of view was that: I want to live with my country, in my language, with my birth parents or with my friends of the orphanage, with people that looks like me. My childhoods point of view was that I felt rejected by a whole nation, I felt sold to a country where people only looked at my slant eyes. My point of view has changed of course: today, I don’t want to go back to live in my country because I’m a white woman trapped in the boddy of an asian girl. I just wish to have a white body with big eyes that would reflect my white inside.