Masculinities: liberation through photography

Abstract

This photographic exploration draws together the work of approximately fifty artists of different ethnicities, generations, and gender identities to look at how ideas of masculinity have evolved since the 1960s. Each of its six themed chapters features bold and arresting work by artists such as Richard Avedon, John Coplans, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Collier Schorr, Larry Sultan, Wolfgang Tillmans, and David Wojnarowicz, who are all renowned for their depictions of masculinity and its tropes. Others, including Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Masahisa Fukase, Adi Nes, Hank Willis Thomas, and Akram Zaatari, offer ethnically and culturally diverse perspectives. A number of female artists--Laurie Anderson, Annette Messager, Tracey Moffatt, and Marianne Wex--explore the uncomfortable and invasive nature of the male gaze and younger artists such as Sam Contis, Andrew Moisey, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Elle Pérez, offer a 21st-century perspective of maleness through the lens of identity and global politics. Each chapter in the book opens with an essay by a key thinker in the fields of art, history, culture, and queer studies. Spanning decades and continents, this exploration shows how increasingly difficult it is to define masculinity. Exhibition: Barbican Centre, London, UK (20.02.-17.05.2020).

Contents

Performing masculinities / Alona Pardo -- Looking at men and masculinity: popular discourse, cultural narratives and the limits of gender / Chris Haywood -- Taking back control? Photography and fantasies of male order / Edwin Coomasaru -- Too close to home: memorializing masculinity / Tim Clark -- Queering masculinity / Jonathan D. Katz -- Way of seeing: African portraiture looks back at the imperial eye / Ekow Eshun -- Disrupting the archetype -- Male order: power, patriarchy and space -- Too close to home: family and fatherhood -- Queering masculinity -- Reclaiming the black body -- Women on men: reversing the male gaze.