Photographer Wyatt Neumann Captured His Dad Life One Instagram at a Time

The photographer celebrated the innocence of childhood and venerates of his own role as a father.

June 21, 2015, 2:30pm

Photographs by Wyatt Neumann and used with permission

Photographer Wyatt Neumann prolifically captured intimate moments of fatherhood as he takes his two young children on adventures through New York City and abroad. From swimming in public fountains to backpacking through Cambodia, Neumann captures wondrous moments of his children with precious clarity and posted them to his Instragram feed with hashtag labels #dadlife and #notesfromtheroad. His photos and captions were a celebration of the innocence of childhood and a veneration of his own role as a father.

He said, “Everything good in the world lives within the eyes of my children”.

In 2014, he and his then two-year-old daughter took a cross-country trip alone. Neumann photographed the toddler across desert landscapes, public bathrooms, and hotel rooms in her favorite fairy dress and often times without clothes. He posted those images to his Facebook and Instagram accounts and quickly received a social media backlash. Critics called his portraits “perverted”, “sick”, and “pornographic” and questioned his parenting ethics. His images were tagged for inappropriate content and his profiles were suspended. Neumann embarked on a very public freedom of expression and freedom of speech fight to protect his artwork against internet watch groups.

“In my photographs, some people see innocence and beauty, while others see only sexual victimization and violence. It’s an interesting lesson in the power of fear and fundamentalism, and the aggression that it can spawn. It’s also a mirror that we can look at and see ourselves looking back. It’s a chance to decide how we want to view the world, and to decide what kind of world we want to create. For ourselves, our futures, and the future we leave for our children.”

He decided to make the attack against him into a public conversation, turning his collection of photos into an exhibit titled, I Feel Sorry for Your Children:The Sexualization of Innocence in America to address the controversy. In his artist statement for the show he wrote, “What’s troubling is the abject reviling of the human body, the intense and overt sexualization of the natural form, especially the naked bodies of carefree young children, who have yet to feel the burden of institutionalized body image awareness and the embarrassment that comes with adolescence. My children are free, they live without shame.”

In 1992, the photographer Sally Mann also experienced a controversial media backlash when she published black-and-white nude portraits of her own children. They were considered hyper-sexualized and irresponsible on the part of the artist parent. The portraits are now a monograph published by Aperture titled, Immediate Family.

Photographers like Mann and Neumann who make the familial their art hit a nerve in their ecstatic reverence of the intimacy in parenthood. Their elevated depictions of personal moments are beautiful and vulnerable for all involved, the subject, the photographer, the public viewing the works.

Neumman was aware of this. For the show he wrote, “So the choice seems clear: do we live in fear and condemnation? Or do we celebrate one another, and ourselves, in this life? I choose to believe in our ability to fight fear with love, ignorance with understanding, and to unite rather than divide. But you be the judge… is this pornography, art, expression, or exploitation. It’s up to us to either cower in fear, or liberate ourselves and live.”

On June 12, 2015, Neumann suffered a brain aneurysm while riding his motorcycle and died suddenly. He is survived by his wife and two children. The Wyatt Neumann Family Fund was established to support his family. You can still see his I nstagram feed, full of dad life moments.