THE “HE BOY”

Spring 2024

This photo series focuses on the expounded complexity of American masculinity. Through portraits and documentation, I set forth to disrupt the tenets of traditional romanticized manhood through the use of hyperbole. I grew up in a culture that was perpetuated by manliness. My life was constantly flooded with a plethora of sports events, cheap beer, ESPN on the T.V. and eggs and meat constantly stockpiled in the fridge. This existence of manly culture wasn’t damaging to me, but rather became a form of cultural perception as I grew older. I found it wasn’t the sports or the eggs that irked me, it was the underlying pressures of male dominance within heteronormative culture that gave me a negative perception of manly culture. There was an artifice, and I didn’t know how much of it affected the qualities of men until I reflected on the world I grew up in. I grew up constantly regarded as aloof and stupid. My highschool was ruled by boys in pit vipers, flashing gang signs in tiny homecoming sports jackets. They drove big cars, and fucked the skinniest, blondest, tannest, and tightest girls. Traditional masculinity is built on a need to exhibit power. The “real manly-man” is merely a put-on. This is sustained by an accepted cultural disposition, and is ingrained in a fragile and dehumanizing “masculine ideology”. This dominating nature of masculinity is all consuming, and multifaceted within American culture.

The “ideal man” doesn’t outright address his manhood, so I will do it for him. 

Winter 2023

SEXUAL SENTIMENTALS focuses on the phenomenon of sexualized Iconography.

THE SEEMING WILL OF THE WAY

Fall 2023

The Seeming Will of the Way is a mixed media project about small American towns. While focusing on the commonalities of landscape, there is a recurring theme focusing on the cultural aspects that influence the ones who are living there.

HOW WE CARRY WEIGHT

Summer 2023

How We Carry Weight is a project compiled of sequential images taken one one bench in Washington Square Park. This series showcases ordinary people, in an effort to capture the unique and fleeting world of the present day.