Seeing Male is an exhibition of photographs captured by partners Ken Graves and Eva Lipman which belong to individual projects shot over three decades.

In the early years of their practice, Lipman and Graves documented rituals marking the passage of time, photographing subjects on the cusp of adulthood, or adults in the throes of initiation. Many of these early images were taken at traditionally male dominated sites: in the back rooms of sporting events, on the sidelines of demolition derbies, in European bathhouses, at military barracks and at boy scout jamborees. These images celebrate manhood and enact rituals to mark the passage of boys into men.

Turning their cameras away from the main event, Lipman and Graves searched for a visual language to express hidden tensions, vulnerabilities and desires at the heart of individual subjects. In contrast to the idealized male hero, their photographs witness the longing, obsession, self-aversion and passion that lurks beneath the surface. They hone in on body parts, signaling undertones of camaraderie and hidden emotions. At these sites, by way of coded rituals, men celebrate excess, risk and violence in a male culture that shuns physical contact between men.

After the emergence of the feminist movement and the unprecedented changes of the post-Vietnam era, the feminist perspective reanimated the discourse around male desire, and the destabilization of masculinity as a category gained momentum. With expanding notions of masculinity emerging, Graves and Lipman returned to these locations with new interest, focusing on the relationships of men with other men.

Photographing during ill-fitted moments, misperformances, and unguarded excess, the artists expose the alienation, anxiety and oppression inflicted upon the male psyche. Despite the social conventions that heterosexualize male contact, homoerotic tensions erupt with latent eroticism, manifest in such qualities as sacrifice and devotion. The extremity of competition, the profound desire for cathartic release and the drive for containment all express the need to overcome restrictions imposed on the male body.

In Seeing Male, the reconfiguration of these early images challenges past assumptions about the work, posing new questions, unveiling layers of meaning, and reflecting shifts in the current cultural landscape.

Anglim/Trimble