In Japan they have family rental agencies. They supply children, grandchildren or spouses to order with a single purpose: to recreate that specific form of affection that only family life can give. The slogan of one of these agencies promises something like “More pleasure than the pleasure reality can provide.” Actually, that wouldn't be a bad description of a family, including all the pros and cons.
The need for a family nowadays seems primary and all-encompassing, but the way its “traditional” version is invariably idealised increasingly resembles a faded hologram or vaguely sinister fairy tale. It’s full of shadowy areas that are, frankly, rather scary.
Fortunately, at the same time the notion of the family has expanded, dilated, shrunk and morphed into new and varied combinations. Not so much in Italy, true, but we've learned to be patient. Meanwhile, it’s interesting for all of us to take a closer look at some of the new kinds of families. Like the photographer Steven Klein and his son Ace: four and a half years old, conceived with an egg donor and a surrogate mother.
If anyone imagines that an artist like Klein, with his subversive, complex, sometimes estranging imagination is somehow different from any other adoring parent, well, they’re wrong. All happy parents are much the same when they talk about their kids. In this issue, for the first time, he shot a feature in partnership with his son: together with his father and Patti Wilson, Ace painted and posed a series of mannequins for us.
How did you decide to become a father?
For years I’d been a one-man show, married to my work and career. Then a time came when I realised I wanted a family. It's not that my workload got less, it's just that I always thought that having a full life included bringing up children. And when you have children it opens up a whole new worldview. Also my intention for the child was really important. I didn't want a child just because I felt lonely or needed to fill some gap. I really wanted to have Ace, to bring him into this world so I can teach him and hoping then, through his own experience, he will succeed in making it better.
Weren’t you even a bit anxious?
I’m frightened about a lot of things. For instance, I'm still fearful before I do a shoot. And the idea of meeting Ace in hospital for the first time also scared me. But at the same time it was also the most beautiful thing in my life. Ace was born outside Chicago, ahead of time, so I only managed to visit him next day. I was overwhelmed. I kept wondering, can I do it alone and have I made the right decision? The last time I saw Franca [Sozzani] in New York, Ace must have been a few months old, and we had a lunch that was supposed to be about business. In the end we only talked about children. And Franca was like, “Look, I was a single mother myself with a job. There are all sorts of things I couldn’t do with my son, but he turned out great just the same. Somehow or other things work out. You make them work out.” And it's true. Sticking to an idealised and traditional idea of the family nowadays is almost anachronistic. Mine is hardly a traditional family, but it is a family. Ace and I aren’t alone, and every minute, every day, I try and help him have extraordinary experiences. And Ace makes a lot of people happy – I can’t say how many.
How does becoming a single father work in America?
First you need to find out whether you’re fertile, which is more hassle than you might expect. At least in New York, where it’s not legal to have children with a surrogate. Eventually I found a fertility doctor based in New York who does surrogacy implants also in Connecticut, where it’s legal. It all started there. First you need an agency that puts you in contact with a possible mother and does all the legal paperwork. As far as I was concerned, the decisions were all very instinctive. So for instance, when they introduced me to April – and I was born in April – I realised right off she was the right one. April’s wonderful. She’d only ever done another surrogate pregnancy for a German gay couple. She’s married, she’s a special education teacher for children with learning disabilities, she has two kids who are now teenagers and two more she adopted who were born to a cocaine-addict mother. And over the years she’s fostered 40 children. There’s a huge misconception about these things. Try asking. Nine out of ten people will tell you surrogate mothers just produce babies in a kind of child factory. Maybe because they don't know April. I repeat, she’s a very special person, always cheerful and really good. We’ve become friends. Every time Ace has a birthday she not only comes but she brings her whole family along.
Does Ace know she’s his surrogate mother?
He’s still too small to understand it. But I’ve made a book to show it all to him, in a way children can understand. And then there’s the person who donated the eggs, who’s still a part of him. When you choose the donor, they give you these profiles, a bit like an agency for models. They have the pictures, they have videos, they talk about what their interests are and things like that. For Ace, I spent a month searching, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Not that I wanted to seem difficult, but in these things I guess you have to trust your instinct. I wanted someone from Europe, educated, with a cultivated background and a clean health record, but I never found donors with all these characteristics. Then eventually they asked a young woman from Russia – I'm part Russian – if she was willing to donate again. It fit the bill for me in so many ways. I absolutely wanted to meet her. I would have loved to go out to dinner with her or take her picture, because someday I would be able to tell Ace I had met her, but the agency kept telling me absolutely no, it’s against all the rules. And instead – this I didn’t know – the eggs and sperm are collected at the same time, so we actually met in the waiting room. She was beautiful. She looked like Natalia V. [Vodianova]. We clicked at once, and to me first impressions are everything. We talked for an hour and a half and in the end they had to separate us. I guess it was destiny.
Is this the first time you’ve worked on a project with Ace?
On a real project, yes. It intrigues me, because children are unpredictable and Ace is very creative. He already gave me a scene where he wants to take a photo where he’s in my truck SUV with the dog driving, chasing me on my horse. We'll see. It’s really great there’s an issue dedicated to children. I’ve thought a lot about coronavirus and the way it affects mainly adults and the elderly. It’s almost an act of God, a way to show us children are the planet’s future. Hopefully they’ll fix the mess we’ve made. I think a whole new consciousness is coming into the world and the virus is part of making people shift faster. Or at least I hope so.
What impact will it have on the world of fashion?
I used to talk with Polly Mellen, who told me about the days with Avedon. He would shoot for four days, and then decide it wasn’t right and reshoot the whole thing if he wasn’t satisfied. Even when I started working I would take three photos a day and that would be it. Now you’re doing ten a day with video footage, BTS, films, social media content. There may be 30 people on my set, half of them I don't even know exactly what they’re doing. I’ll put it this way – it’s not about whether fashion will learn the lesson or not, the Earth is going to teach fashion a lesson.
In your images you always present complex, sometimes disquieting realities. How does Ace feel about your work?
Ace doesn’t see the TV news or have an iPad or anything. He likes documentaries and he experiences nature as fully as possible. He won’t even watch The Wizard of Oz because he thinks it’s scary, or the Lion King because he feels it’s violent, but he doesn't think my work is scary. It must be because it’s all over the house and he sees me working. But big cranes or maybe drones interest him much more than the photo shoot. I think an artist has to show and interpret what’s happening in the world. It's his job. But when you’re around children you stop teaching and start learning. And I’m convinced that for us adults there’s nothing more important and even more interesting than a child’s world.
Thanks for the laugh guys, I really needed that.
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