Artist Statement: Gardner Ten Pins
This body of work is a visual meditation on fatherhood—what it gives, what it takes, and what it leaves behind. Through photographs, I trace the quiet, often unspoken spaces where love, loss, and legacy meet. Each image becomes a fragment of memory, a reflection of growth, and a dialogue with the past.
Spawned by depression from confronting the past after returning to my hometown just in time for a global pandemic—and closely followed by becoming a first-time father—this work seeks to navigate the intersections of childhood, trauma, fatherhood, and self. Told through a stream-of-consciousness, nonlinear story, it explores how memory, emotion, and imagination overlap and shape identity.
Fatherhood exists in a duality: a role filled with deep love and protection, yet also shaped by inherited pain, silence, and the fear of failure. This work is a contemplation of self in the face of that tension—working through mixed emotions surrounding becoming a father, the fragility of emotions, and the uncertainty of growth.
It confronts generational echoes of trauma while searching for tenderness, vulnerability, and healing. These photographs are not just about being a father but about slowly, imperfectly, and intentionally becoming one. Growth here is nonlinear; it comes in stillness, repetition, and rupture. Reflection is not only looking back but re-seeing—questioning the roles we’ve inherited, the patterns we repeat, and the futures we choose to shape.
At its core, this practice is deeply personal, but it extends outward. Photography enables me to convey what I cannot always express, creating space for empathy and connection. This work is for anyone who has tried to break a cycle, to rewrite their story, or to build something softer from something hard. It is about the weight of family, the fragility of masculinity, and the grace of trying anyway.
