Portrait of a Man

Portraiture and the Male Form

I’ve never taken portraits of anyone other than myself up until very recently when a friend who was going through breast cancer surgery asked me to photograph her breasts, the last they would be in their ‘normal’ condition. I was so touched and honoured, I said I’d do it but would require at least a year.

The female body, even though not mine, is easy to photography, at least as far as gender is concerned because, well, it’s beautiful. And maybe it’s close to who I am. No, I don’t think that ‘s it. I just think aesthetically, the female body has a beauty I like to discover and explore.

While researching for this essay, I find that historically, especially during the Renaissance, it was men who were painted more often than women and that this was tied to gender empowerment and the ‘male gaze’ through which the women were often perceived and therefore painted.

According to Sotheby’s male portraits sell for a much higher price as well.

I found this fascinating because i thought it was pretty much a given that there were more portraits of women than men, and yes, even though I agree about the male gaze and the fact that there are more male painters than there are female, i, perhaps naively, assumed that people just liked seeing women more than men because, well, we have a better body that pleases the eye.

So now, that i have been proven wrong i’ll just stick to what i feel.

Male bodies have never interested me. I find them boring and all the same. Give or take a moustache.

I find nothing nuanced in a male’s figure, or at least I understand no nuances; i think penises are ugly as hell and obstruct what actually, potentially could be a aesthetically pleasing sculptural form.

I take that back, I can look at a male figure for about two seconds whereas I can stare at a female figure for minutes.

I am not attracted to women sexually, but one might say there is a certain competitive nature of a woman viewing a woman.

But even that doesn’t explain the joy I get of photographing women nudes.

Their bodies are like secrets— with contours and twists, if naked, then like the bare winter trees, a sculpture of its own, and if clothed, a multilayered perplexity that is waiting it be peeled off its layers.

No matter what the body type, the female body is a very gratifying form to play with in any art.

The woman has been historically depicted as one dimensional, as passive.

But how can this be?

How in the world can I be the only one to feel that this is a gross misunderstanding or a lack of aesthetics?