Masculinities: Photography and Film from the 1960s to Now: Liberation through Photography

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The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of guided tours and film screenings including Revolverkino at the Gropius Bau (11–13 November 2020). The guided tours take place on Sundays from 3 – 4 pm, on alternating weeks in English or German. The U.K. capital’s infamous private boys’ clubs—which have produced many of the U.K.’s politicians—are depicted in 26 photographs by Karen Knorr. She shot the images in central London in the early 1980s at members-only, men-only spaces, and captioned them with snippets of overheard conversations, news reports, and government records. With their leather chesterfields and dark wood paneling—design elements that are common in other exclusive, male-dominated environments across Britain like private schools, Oxford University, and the Houses of Parliament—Knorr establishes an intriguing link between these hypermasculine environments, their architecture, and power. A deftly curated show that explored the overlapping creative journeys of a photographer and sculptor who first crossed paths when they both were commissioned to create images of civilians sheltering in the London Underground during the blitz. Moore’s artful photographs of his sculptures were a surprise, while his up-close drawings of Stonehenge contrasted dramatically with Brandt’s more haunting images of the standing stones rising up from snow-covered fields. Another England reflected through the eyes of two brilliantly perceptive postwar artists. Read the full review. 2 Masculinities: Liberation Through Photography

Elias Williams is a filmmaker and founder of online media platform, mandemhood.com. He recently graduated with an MA in History from the University of Bristol and his film projects often explore untold histories. Elias’ work for MANDEM comprises providing a space for young men of colour to express themselves through writing, film and music, and has also included hosting panel-led discussions about topical issues around race, class and gender.

“By deconstructing or destabilising, and disrupting, and to a degree resisting these tropes of masculinities, it also allows for a certain emancipation of masculinity,”

This autumn, the Gropius Bau presents Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, a comprehensive group exhibition that explores the diverse ways in which masculinity is experienced, performed and socially constructed through photography and film from the 1960s to the present day. At a time when ideas around masculinity are undergoing a global crisis and concepts such as “toxic” and “fragile” masculinity are shaping social discourse, over 300 works by 50 international artists including Laurie Anderson, Richard Avedon, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and Wolfgang Tillmans offer a panorama of filmic and photographic explorations of masculinity rife with contradictions and complexity. The show also highlights lesser-known and younger artists such as Cassils, Sam Contis, George Dureau, Elle Pérez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hank Willis Thomas and Karlheinz Weinberger, among many others. Touching on themes of patriarchy, power, queer identity, race, class, sexuality and hyper-masculine stereotypes, as well as female perceptions of men, the works present masculinity as an unfixed, performative identity. Homosociality Typically non-romantic and/or non-sexual same-sex relationships and social groupings – may sometimes include elements of homoeroticism, as they are frequently interdependent phenomena. Gender roles Specific cultural roles defined by the weight of gendered ideas, restrictions and traditions. Men and women are often expected, sometimes forced, to occupy oppositional gender roles: aggressor versus victim, protector versus nurturer and so on. Many gender roles are specific to intersections of race, class, sexuality, religion and disabled status – examples of these types of gender roles can be seen in the stereotypes of the Jezebel or the Dragon Lady.

Articles, Articles 2020, Events, Exhibitions, Exhibitions 2020, Photography, Photography 2020 Tags: But there are revelations alongside these familiar classics. German artist Marianne Wex’s comical cuttings archive observes, among much else, the ubiquity of manspreading in 1977. Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase’s time-lapse portraits of himself with his ageing father are a magnificent memorial to paternal love. And Larry Sultan’s tender images of his dad trying to fix the vacuum cleaner, practising his golf swing, or standing uselessly by the empty pool in California, seem to reverse the roles, so that the son becomes anxious parent to the father. Barbican Art Gallery reopens Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, a major group exhibition that explores how masculinity is experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed as expressed and documented through photography and film from the 1960s to the present day. In this exercise we'll be photographing an object of meaning that represents an element of ‘masculinity’ in your life. You can make your photograph any way that you like - on a smart phone, digital or film camera, depending on what you feel most comfortable with. Step 1: Find your object Hierarchy Across many cultures throughout history, and continuing into the present moment throughout large parts of the world, gender functions as a hierarchy: some gender categories and gender expressions are granted higher value and more power than others. Men are often higher up the gender hierarchy than women, but the gender hierarchy is affected by racism, disablism, ageism, transphobia and other factors; in the West, men in their thirties are likely to be considered higher up the gender hierarchy than men in their eighties, for example.It isn’t just people who are tasked with keeping our distance these days, it is also our art. It must be a strange new reality for those pictures left up on walls, unlooked at. Hanging in empty hallways, deafeningly silent. Do the paintings long for a gaze, for the warmth of a visitor standing too close? Or is a bit of peace for them, to know that they still exist even without being seen? Perhaps we can take solace from that. What comes to mind when you think of the word masculinity and yourself? Is it an item of clothing you often (or used to) wear? Is it an object related to your current or past relationships? Perhaps it's a part of your body (remember to keep it family friendly!) MANDEM is an online media platform that offers a unique space for young men of colour to express themselves through writing, music and film. They provide a space for young people to engage in topical discussions centred around culture, politics and identity, while further encouraging them to challenge the narratives that appear in mainstream media. Kobena Mercer, ‘Reading Racial Fetishism: The Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe’, in Emily Apter and William Pietz, eds, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 307–29.

Rebekka Yallop is an artist and writer based in London who works with moving image and text, often exploring queer themes. They were part of the Barbican’s Young Visual Arts group in 2019 and is currently one of Chisenhale Studios’ 2020 Into the Wild artists. They continue to make work, most recently a collaborative queer fiction zine. Exhibition Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is curated and organised by Barbican Centre, London. The exhibition will then tour to Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles from 29 June – 20 September 2020 and Gropius-Bau, Berlin from 16 October 2020 until 10 January 2021. The exhibition is designed by vPPR Architects with graphic design by The Bon Ton.Masculinities: Liberation through Photography explores the diverse ways masculinity has been experienced, performed, coded and socially constructed in photography and film from the 1960s to the present day. Examining increasingly fluid notions of masculinity over the past six decades, this book offers a culturally diverse collection of work from some of the world's most celebrated photographers.