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

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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.

Annie Hayter is a Barbican Young Poet. She won BBC Proms Young Poet in 2011, and was runner-up for Times Young Poet 2012. She’s performed at the Southbank Centre, Barbican, and on Radio 3. She is published in MAGMA and TimeOut. In contrast to the conventions of the traditional family portrait, the artists gathered in the third chapter, Too close to Home: Family and Fatherhood, set out to record the “messiness” of life, reflecting on misogyny, violence, sexuality, mortality, intimacy and unfolding family dramas, presenting a more complex and not always comfortable vision of fatherhood and masculinity. Fetishisation To turn the subject into a fetish, sexually or otherwise. Fetishisation in terms of gender and desire frequently occurs in conjunction with objectification and power. Men and women of colour are frequently fetishised by white people, in society and in artistic practice, through different stereotypes and limitations. Trans and disabled people are also subject to fetishisation, particularly in bodily terms. Kobena Mercer’s critical essay on Robert Mapplethorpe, ‘Reading Radical Fetishism’, 1 and David Henry Hwang’s play and afterword to M. Butterfly (1988) both explore the notion of fetishisation. Through the medium of film and photography, Masculinities considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day.Bas Jan Ader (1945-1975), Laurie Anderson (1947), Kenneth Anger (1927), Knut Åsdam (1968), Richard Avedon (1923-2004), Aneta Bartos, Richard Billingham (1970), Cassils (1975), Sam Contis (1982), John Coplans (1920-2003), Rineke Dijkstra (1959), George Dureau (1930-2014), Thomas Dworzak (1972), Hans Eijkelboom (1949), Fouad Elkoury (1952), Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955-1989), Hal Fischer (1950), Samuel Fosso (1962), Anna Fox (1961), Masahisa Fukase (1934-2012), Sunil Gupta (1953), Peter Hujar (1934-1987), Liz Johnson Artur (1964), Isaac Julien (1960), Kiluanji Kia Henda (1979), Karen Knorr (1954), Deana Lawson (1979), Hilary Lloyd (1964), Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), Peter Marlow (1952-2016), Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), Annette Messager (1943), Duane Michals (1932), Tracey Moffatt (1960), Andrew Moisey (1979), Richard Mosse (1980), Adi Nes (1966), Catherine Opie (1961), Elle Pérez (1989), Herb Ritts (1952-2002), Kalen Na’il Roach (1992), Collier Schorr (1963), Paul Mpagi Sepuya (1982), Clare Strand (1973), Mikhael Subotzky (1981), Larry Sultan (1946-2009), Hank Willis Thomas (1976), Wolfgang Tillmans (1968), Piotr Uklański (1968), Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006), Marianne Wex (1937-2020), David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992), Akram Zaatari (1966). In defiance of the prejudice and legal constraints against homosexuality over the last century in Europe, the United States and beyond, the works presented in the forth chapter, Queering Masculinity, highlight how artists from the 1960s onwards have forged a new politically-charged queer aesthetic. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the Barbican brings together the work of over 50 international artists, photographers and filmmakers including Laurie Anderson, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Isaac Julien and Catherine Opie.

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!) The first British retrospective of Sunil Gupta’s work brings together material from across his long and varied career, from the scenes of everyday gay life in New York that he chronicled for his breakthrough series, Christopher Street , in 1976, to 2008’s elaborately constructed and highly symbolic vignettes, The New Pre-Raphaelites. “What does it mean to be a gay Indian man?” he has said of his photography. “This is the question that follows me around everywhere I go.” Read more. 4 Photoworks festival 2020 Daniel is a photographic artist whose work explores how we can use photography to process our experiences. This photographic activity prompts you to consider what masculinity means to you through a mixture of objects, reflection and creative writing. 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. 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.Bringing a splash of colour to what has otherwise been a dull, grey year, the Swedish-Spanish architectural duo of Space Popular injected a bolt of supercharged visual joy into 2020. An exhibition at the RIBA on the history of style was sadly cut short, but was then brilliantly reinvented as an immersive virtual environment, where you could browse the show online as a computer game avatar. Meanwhile, the pair demonstrated their skills beyond the virtual with the completion of a dazzling new house in Spain that saw wafer-thin terracotta tile vaults suspended inside a bright-green steel frame. We’re in for a treat when they start to build big. Read more. 4 Stealing from the Saracens by Diana Darke Normativity The process by which some groups of people, forms of expression and types of behaviour are classified according to a perceived standard of what is ‘normal’, ‘natural’, desirable and permissible in society. Inevitably, this process designates people, expressions and behaviours that do not fit these norms as abnormal, unnatural, undesirable and impermissible. 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. 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 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

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. Cosima Cobley Carr is a Barbican Young Creatives Alumni and an interdisciplinary artist, working in moving-image, collage and sound. Across different media, Cosi uses a collage method, bringing diverse elements from found and archival sources together with analogue and digitally created elements. Through their practice, Cosi explores issues related to social understanding, language-use and psychotherapy. Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructedfrom the 1960s to the present day. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the exhibition brings together the work of over 50 international artists, photographers and filmmakers includingLaurie Anderson,Sunil Gupta,Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Isaac JulienandCatherine Opie. In the wake of #MeToo, the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, racial politics, female perceptions of men, hypermasculinestereotypes, tendernessand the family, the exhibition examines the critical role photography and film have played in the way masculinitiesareimagined and understood in contemporary culture. 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.Yasmeen Lari outside a women’s centre on stilts she designed in Sindh province, Pakistan. Photograph: courtesy Heritage Foundation of Pakistan 3 100 Day Studio, by the Architecture Foundation If you’re photographing yourself or someone else - be sure to make the other person feels comfortable and safe and that you have their consent.