As men, we seek to make our Father’s proud. The culmination of genes and influence pushes us to be better than our maker, seeking approval as we look back over our shoulder to make sure he’s watching us try our hardest.

 

I am often asked what the main factor is that motivated me to pursue the creative lifestyle of an artist, and I can very easily answer with one word, absence.

 

At the ripe age of 10, I lost my beloved Father to lung cancer after a very short battle with the disease. Although it was a very life altering and emotionally shattering experience, I believe that I have learned more in his absence than I ever could have in his presence. My Father, from what I can remember and what I have been told, was a very intelligent, hardworking, and creative man. He spent his free time playing music, taking photographs, and enjoying his life and family. He pursued a career of retail, holding a position as the regional merchandising manager of a company called Jean Country, which would be equivalent to a modern day Zumiez or any other modern day streetwear outlet. He specialized in clothing, designing store displays and choosing the hottest new products to stock his stores with.

 

I remember on many occasions he would return home late each night with new clothes for me to wear. He introduced me to brands like Stussy and JNCO and made sure that I was the first person in my school to have all the hottest trends. He would take me into his office and let me talk skateboarding and punk music with all his employees and then treat me to packs of Topps baseball cards and mall cuisine from the food court. Not to brag, but my father was a legend. He was a character, the life of the party, someone you want to have on your side. Selfless in action, he worked hard to provide for his family.

 

Watching one of your parents die at a young age is something that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. To put it lightly, it’s a fucking nightmare. You begin the process of coping with the diagnosis with hope. You spend thousands of dollars on the best medical attention in the country and you pray that it’s just a phase that will pass. You watch the person go through chemotherapy and battle the sickness, and often times the treatments work and life seemingly goes back to normal, while other times it gets worse and leaves you praying to things you may not even normally be praying to.

 

I watched my Father lose the battle to cancer over a roughly one year span. His timeline gradually got shorter and shorter as the tumors took over his lungs and eventually his brain, essentially rendering him a vegetable and eventually taking his life.

 

What I was left behind with was his legacy, several personal items, and a box full of Kodak 35mm slide film from all of his travels. For as long as I can remember, the photographs captured on those slides have been alongside me, waiting for the day that I take on the project of scanning and curating his archives. My father wasn’t a professional by any means, simply a hobbyist who enjoyed snapping moments along his travels. It’s taken me years to work up the energy to go through these photos, mainly because of how spooky it is to have a very similar style and approach to photography as someone who never taught me a single thing about the craft.

I have always been very partial to the phrase ASNF (A Son Never Forgets), from the movie, Men of Honor. There’s a scene where Robert Deniro is antagonizing the main character played by Cuba Gooding Jr about a radio that his father had given him as a child. On the radio was handwritten letters spelling ASNF. Deniro was screaming at Cuba asking him what his Father had told him to make him work so hard in the face of adversity. His answer was very simply stated, “He told me to be the best”.

 

From the day of his death almost 20 years ago, to today as I type this out, I have gone above and beyond what I thought was possible to be the best I could possibly be in anything that I do in order to properly honor the legacy of my late Father. So today, on his 61st birthday, I have decided to release the first of many series of photographs captured by my Dad on his travels throughout the world. Naturally I have titled the series, A Son Never Forgets and I wish to publish a book covering the entire series of curated photographs that I have scanned and edited in order to share them with the world. This is a project that has meant so much to me for so long that I avoided it because of the weight that it carries. I never got the chance to share a love for photography with my Father, and in a way taking on this personal project has made me feel closer to him and his creative vision of the world that we live in. I find a sense of closure as I publish these photos, since nobody has ever seen them but him and whoever processed the film. I feel very blessed to still have such a large library of images that he created, and I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed curating the archive.

 

So here’s to you Charles James Lano, you are gone but you have never been forgotten. It is in your absence that I have become a man, and when we meet again I hope to have earned your approval as your son and as an artist. You’ve never left my side.

 

All of the photographs were taken with 35mm Kodak Kodachrome slide film. I kick off the series with a set of photos taken in Mexico sometime during 1978. Please enjoy.

 

ASNF.