IPJ 13 | Inheritance

I am writing this while drinking a bitter Lavazza at the Girona airport the day before Father’s Day, slightly fatigued before another intra-European flight and thinking about the things we inherit from others without ever realizing we’re inheriting them.

My father spent much of his career in the commodities business, a path that, perhaps unsurprisingly, I eventually followed myself. I suspect he was often unfulfilled in that world, unhappy even.

Upon retirement, he threw himself wholeheartedly into art and making things with his hands. In many ways, it felt like he was finally giving shape to a part of himself that had always been there, one I had only seen in glimpses before.

It was the happiest I had ever known him.

A talented amateur photographer for many years, he put my first camera in my hands at a young age, a classic Canon AE-1, showed me the basics and then, without much more instruction, encouraged me to play with it.

That was largely his style. Always encouraging, never demanding. He would expose me to an interest or a passion and then let me take it from there.

Things were shown more than described.

Even now, at 82, he is constantly creating. Sculptural lighting, paintings and projects that seem to appear out of nowhere, often with no audience in mind beyond his own curiosity.

He gets deeply invested, puzzling through problems and returning to them again and again with a patience I could only dream of until a path forward begins to reveal itself.

One of dad’s lights at my Austin home (photo by Leonid Furmansky)

I never harbored any grand ambitions around photography as a kid. But, like him, I eventually found myself returning to a more creative path after leaving the relative comfort of an office job.

Lately, I have been more aware of the similarities in how our lives have unfolded, and have begun to understand even more of what my father was actually giving me.

I’m reminded of a recent conversation with Taka Yagi, the sixth generation at Kaikado, a tea caddy workshop in Kyoto. I first photographed his father more than 12 years ago now and have since had the opportunity to watch the next generation shape its future.

A few months ago, Taka and I were speaking about what he had learned from his dad when he made an observation I have not been able to stop thinking about.

“There’s something your father passes on that can’t be taught. You can’t see it. You just have to feel it.”

In a workshop, perhaps that means an intangible sense of judgment—like learning to recognize when an object is ready simply from the sound of a hammer striking its surface.

But that wasn’t what stayed with me.

It was something more abstract.

The way someone approaches a problem. Their persistence. Their curiosity. Their standards. Their particular way of moving through the world.

That’s what my father had been showing me all those years ago, and I am only now beginning to realize it.