To do list: to father a son, to build a house, to plant a tree.

is a visual project about contemporary fatherhood and masculinity, rooted in my experience as an actively present father. Through personal and symbolic images, it explores vulnerability, care, and the need to redefine male roles beyond stereotypes.

To Do List – To Father a Son, To Build a House, To Plant a Tree” is a visual project through which I reflect on contemporary fatherhood and the redefinition of masculinity. As the father of a ten-year-old son—present, actively involved, and assuming full parental responsibility—I seek to understand the roots of gender-role stereotypes and the systemic causes of imbalance embedded in prevailing models of parenting. This imbalance became particularly acute during a years-long legal process concerning the care of my son, initiated by parental abduction and the abrupt rupture of his everyday life. Throughout this process, despite being directly affected by these events, I was compelled to defend my presence and competence as a father, rather than participate in a shared search for solutions centered on my child’s well-being. This experience became the starting point for fundamental questions about the role of the father, the man, and the limits of institutional perceptions of parenthood. The project centers on the crisis of masculinity, which I approach not as a failure but as a space for transformation. Within this crisis, I identify an opportunity to dismantle rigid male and female roles and to construct a more balanced, empathetic vision of manhood. My work engages with the emotional complexity, vulnerability, and intimacy of fatherhood, moving beyond the social expectation of men as strong, restrained providers. The images combine intimate moments from my life with my son and symbolic scenes that reveal the weight of inherited stereotypes shaping the role of the father across generations. Everyday objects, fragments of childhood, and domestic spaces function as visual metaphors for the tension between internalized norms and the pursuit of presence, equality, and emotional closeness. “To Do List” is also an invitation to reflect on the marginalization of fathers within legal and social systems that continue to default to mothers as primary caregivers. Through this project, I argue that fatherhood is far more than a checklist—to father a son, to build a house, to plant a tree—a phrase long upheld as the essence of masculine fulfillment. Parenthood, as I reveal, is time, care, responsibility, and the ongoing effort to build deep, lasting bonds with one’s child.