‘I see so many of my friends doing such a great job, day in, day out, but all I hear in the press and the public are about dads acting as glorified babysitters, rather than being proper caregivers,” says Aaron Sylvester. He points out the glaringly obvious fact that there are few black male role models visible in the media in a family context – something he has addressed in a photography project – Dad, The Forgotten Parent: The New Black Stereotype.

In photographs taken by Jess Hope and Kiran Cox, Sylvester, 34, has created a series of images of black fathers in their everyday roles as supportive mentors and parents. The pictures show the moments that make up the minutiae of life, including a father and son cuddling at a bus stop, a trip to the barber and a dad taking a work call as he supervises breakfast with his daughter.

“These men have fully embraced their responsibilities as a parent and work daily to maintain and develop their relationships with their children,” says Sylvester. “They assign a level of importance to nurture and to being present and want to dispel damaging stereotypes by being a man their child can call Daddy proudly.”

This is a deeply personal project for Sylvester because he grew up without a father. His dad, a taxi driver from Grenada, was murdered in Hounslow, west London, when Sylvester was a baby. The family are still not clear about the circumstances and the killer was never found. His mother, Brenda, a midwife, raised him and his older brother, Jason, on her own. Having come from Trinidad, she did this without much in the way of an extended family or a support network. Aaron and Jason, two years his senior, were, as a result, encouraged to take part in as much sport and as many extracurricular activities as possible. This not only kept them active and occupied, but also introduced them to a number of male mentors.

The only other positive black role models Sylvester saw growing up were on television. “During my childhood and that of many young black males of my generation, the only relatable faces we saw were the likes of Will Smith [The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air], Desmond’s [barber shop] and Bill Cosby [The Cosby Show],” he notes. Although perhaps the less said about the latter nowadays the better.

Aaron Sylvester.

After attending a Catholic school in west London, Sylvester did a Higher National Diploma in marketing and advertising at the London College of Printing. During his time as a business development manager at a design agency, he noticed a chronic dearth of black male aspirational images among those broadcasted and propagated by the advertising industry.

At the same time, he was aware of a plethora of negative and damaging messages being filtered through from news channels across the world, especially in the United States, where most broadcast images of black people were of criminals or crime victims.

“It seemed as though there were black people being shot every other week in the US while I was stuck in London,” he says. “It made me want to do something where I stated the simple fact that black lives matter too,” he says.

The result was a smart photoshoot in Greenwich, in which Sylvester and his friends were suited and booted – the message was that these were just the kind of men you would want your sons to emulate when they grew up. The shoot was entitled What Do You See? The goal was: “To use imagery to ‘create new stereotypes,’ paint new pictures of the black man and highlight the diversity and strength of black men.”

This led to Sylvester’s latest project, published just before Father’s Day on 19 June this year – a perfect time to embrace what Sylvester calls our “daddy issues”.

“We need to talk about fatherhood because after Father’s Day, if the media has its way, the man who helped to bring you into this world will no doubt fall back into the shadows once more.”

What Sylvester – when we talked he was just back from Grenada, where he is launching the new Grenadian Tri Island chocolate company – has done, with great skill and dexterity, is seize a series of seemingly mundane moments that celebrate something we often overlook – the role of the father. He worked with three fathers to develop the project.

“These men are all motivated black fathers and role models in their own right. This project was about giving them a voice too.”

Sylvester hopes, through the project, to present a new, favourable view of male mentors and role models, one in which men are not “invisible or absent within the family unit” but lauded for their contribution to the family and to society as a whole.

“I am stepping out from the ‘status quo’ to say we should not only celebrate fathers but evolve a little more and celebrate all male role models – godfathers, uncles and men who actively provide guidance, support and teach our young leaders of the future,” he says.

@AaronSylvester