With a Foreword by Brunello Cucinelli, This Coffee Table Book Is a Father's Day Must-Have

Yahoo

13-06-2025

John Pearson is known the world over as the first male supermodel, but it's the role of father that he considers his most important. 'I lost my father when I was 11, he was only 45,' he tells Robb Report. 'I fully support men speaking candidly, expressing what fatherhood means to them. It's healthy masculinity.'
It's that sentiment that immediately drew Pearson to the latest project from photographer and author Claiborne Swanson Frank, a poignant collection of photographs and interviews with fathers and their children. Father and Child —available from Assouline just in time for Father's Day on June 15th—features more than fifty fathers with their children including Eli Manning, Craig Melvin, Jimmy Chin, Wes Gordon, Tommy Haas, James Van Der Beek, Rashid Johnson, Kevin Love, Tony Romo—and Brunello Cucinelli, with whom the photographer partnered to bring the project to life. The book follows Swanson Frank's Mother and Child , after which she felt it only natural to celebrate fathers all the same. 'As a mother of two boys who adore their father, I felt inspired to document and celebrate modern fatherhood the same way I did motherhood,' she says.
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'I sensed straight away that the elegance of her character is intrinsically bound to the passion she brings to her work,' says Cucinelli of coming on board to work alongside Swanson Frank for this project. 'It is no coincidence that the very first inspiration for this book stems directly from her family, from her dear ones.'
Cucinelli also wrote the foreword for the book, in which he talks about the principles of fatherhood and what it means to be a 'good man,' something readers will find celebrated throughout. 'In fact, my babbo—as we call our fathers in my homeland of Umbria—repeated to me throughout my life that I could pursue any path I wished, so long as I never failed to behave as a good man, a decent and honourable individual, towards everybody,' he says. 'This book offered me a precious opportunity to revisit, in some way, the relationship I shared with my father. Within its pages, I found something of universal value, recognisable at every latitude: each son or daughter is called, over the course of their life, to cherish and nurture the invaluable human legacy bequeathed to them by their father.'
Cucinelli, both a father and grandfather himself, also reflected on what each of those roles mean to him as he worked with Swanson Frank on this project. 'I would say that this book—among the many thought-provoking insights it offers—invites deep reflection on the value of experience,' he says. 'I have been a son, then a father, and now a grandfather; yet these existential roles remain within me all at once—I cannot, after all, separate them. Perhaps one of the most profound experiences I have come to appreciate is my father's gentleness — a virtue I only truly learned to value with the passing of time.'
It was also important for Swanson Frank to celebrate this powerful group of men as not only exemplary fathers but leaders in the worlds of art, sport, design, business, tech, and film to illustrate the connection between leaving a legacy as both a parent and a professional. To fully embrace her subjects' individuality, she worked together with each of them to collaborate on styling and the location of their shoots, and the result is a collection of photographs that are palpably authentic and emotional.
For Pearson, that meant shooting him and his son Cooper at their home in California. 'It's always time well spent, when together with any of our kids,' he says. 'The shoot was very relaxed, Brunello's clothes always feel and look elegant and Claiborne is a consummate pro.'
Alongside interviews with her subjects, the book also includes an interview between Swanson and her own father, which she says was exceptionally meaningful to undertake. 'I was moved by how deeply he loved his own father and how inspired he was by him,' she says. 'My grandfather was my father's great love and he loved and admired him in such a profound way which in turn shaped his vision of his life and himself.'Above all, Swanson says she hopes this book reflects the meaningful imprint father and child relationships have on families, and on the world – something represented in the through line of all her interviews and photoshoots. 'I hope I conveyed the power of love and family legacy and the reminder that the greatest gift in this life is to love and be loved in return,' she says.
Buy Now on assouline: $120
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