In 2012, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based photographer Dirk Anschütz became a father. The shift in his life was enormous.

Anschütz was raised by a single mother. “I had never met my father, which was never a big deal,” he says. But after his son Ray’s birth, Anschütz says he didn’t have a male parenting role model.

This led to a curiosity about how other dads were raising their kids; curiosity that resulted in a six-year portrait project called Fathers and Sons.

Tracing The Expanding Definition Of Fatherhood

Photos: Dirk Anschütz