Living with the advent of social media, it has allotted us the ability to meticulously craft our identity and persona online. It’s gotten to the point of us asking the question “hey, is that really you?” when looking at some of these pictures. Drawing reference to Cindy Sherman’s approach and her exploration of identity, gender, and her construction of self-image I decided to create a photo series based on those themes.
In the New York Times article the writer Parul Sehgal describes Sherman’s images of these characters as painful, she expresses that “Their vulnerability pains me — how badly they want to achieve some kind of glamour, how magnificently they miss the mark” (SEHGAL, 18). When going onto social media we encounter all types of characters all ranging from the spectrum of being transparently themselves to those who go to extreme lengths to be more than what they are in reality. In my photo series, I decided to portray some of those characters I encounter on the daily. Those characters range from the sensitive boys to the know it all nerds to the sports jock that would give you dirty looks in the hallway. In a way these characters display their own vulnerability and their need for protection through the means of posturing or a hardened exterior.
Sherman’s work addresses the male gaze, I wanted to explore the expectations placed onto men and the roles they assume or the characters they play to navigate through the climate of toxic masculinity. As Sehgal would describe it, “her images are so foundational to feminist art criticism, to notions of the “male gaze,” that it can be difficult to see them for themselves — they come to us encrusted with theory” (SEHGAL, 6), thus I chose not to recreate her photos as there would be connotations and implications as a man recreating a series that is distinctively feminist. In the same way women have had expectations placed onto them through the male gaze, men also share an expectation that is placed onto them as to “what a man should be”.
This photo series seeks to investigate the malleability of identity in the midst of the zeitgeist that is our social media culture. “We live in the era of YouTube fame and reality-TV shows and makeovers, where you can be anything you want to be any minute of the day, and artists are responding to that. Cindy was one of the first to explore the idea of the malleability or fluidity of identity.” (HOBAN, 3). With Instagram feeds being cleared then repopulated with a flood of images that are of the “new” you, I wanted to create my own characters that explore the identity of men and boys that I’ve encountered and witnessed in real life and on the online spaces.
"Scrolling Masculinities"
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