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Everything We Learnt at Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography

We’re living in an age defined by #MeToo and while debates about gender lead our cultural conversations, discussions surrounding masculinity are often reduced or neglected altogether. This is one of the many reasons why Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at the Barbican is so engaging and insightful.
 
Exploring how masculinity is experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed via the medium of photography and film, the exhibition brings together over 300 works by over 50 pioneering international artists, photographers and filmmakers from the 1960s to the present day. Here are some of the highlights, the names worth noticing and those who have disrupted and destabilised myths surrounding modern masculinity.

“Masculinities: Liberation through Photography continues our commitment to presenting leading twentieth century figures in the field of photography while also supporting younger contemporary artists working in the medium today.”

Sam Contis, Untitled (Neck), 2015

Challenging hegemonic masculinity

Seeking to destabilise the myths surrounding modern masculinity, there are a handful of artists who have consistently challenged stereotypical representations of hegemonic masculinity. These names include Collier Schorr, Adi Nes, Akram Zaatari and notably Sam Contis, whose series Deep Springs, 2018 draws on the mythology of the American West and the rugged cowboy. Contis spent four years immersed in an all-male liberal arts college north of Death Valley meditating on the intimacy and violence that coexists in male-only spaces.

Sam Contis, Untitled (Neck), 2015

Thomas Dworzak Taliban portrait, Kandahar-Afghanistan 2002

The image of the fighter

Complicating the conventional image of the fighter, Thomas Dworzak’s acclaimed series Taliban consists of portraits found in photographic studios in Kandahar following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. These distinctive portraits show Taliban fighters posing hand in hand in front of painted backdrops, with guns and flowers acting as props.

Karen Knorr, Newspapers are no longer ironed, Coins no longer boiled So far have Standards fallen from the series Gentlemen, 1981-83

Delving into patriarchy

The exhibition examines the unequal power relations between gender, class and race. Karen Knorr’s series Gentlemen, 1981-83, comprised of 26 black and white photographs taken inside men-only private members’ clubs in central London and accompanied by texts drawn from snatched conversations, parliamentary records and news reports, invites viewers to reflect on notions of class, race and the exclusion of women from spaces of power during Margaret Thatcher’s premiership.

Karen Knorr, Newspapers are no longer ironed, Coins no longer boiled So far have Standards fallen from the series Gentlemen, 1981-83

Peter Hujar, David Brintzenhofe Applying Makeup (II), 1982

Disrupting traditional representations of gender and sexuality

With the rise of the Gay Liberation Movement followed by the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, the exhibition showcases artists such as Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowiz, who progressively began to disrupt traditional representations of gender and sexuality.
 
Hujar’s intimate black-and-white portraits, nudes and cityscapes commemorate New York’s downtown bohemian scene from the late 1960s through to the onset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. The subjects were often lovers, friends and other celebrities and he was focused on capturing vulnerable portraits, rather than idealised portrayals of men.
 
Wojnarowi created a collection of self-portraits during a similar period titled Arthur Rimbaud in New York, in which the emaciated artist wears the mask of the infamous poet Rimbaud as he poses in urban areas of the city – drawing parallels on how both individuals felt like outsiders. The image of the artist lying on a mattress seems to anticipate the Aids epidemic and Wojnarowicz’s premature death at the age of 37 (Rimbaud also died aged 37).

Further highlights not to miss at Masculinities: Liberation through Photography include New York based artist Hank Willis Thomas, who examines the complexities of the black male experience; celebrated Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s The Family, 1971-1989, chronicles the life and death of his family with a particular emphasis on his father.

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