LPA Pick / Barbican Centre / Masculinities: Liberation through Photography

For the first LPA Pick of this year, Clio chose the Masculinities: Liberation through Photography exhibition at the Barbican Centre.

This edition of LPA Pick feels even more special as we can share our thoughts of the exhibition and provide a mini tour of images, highlighting our favourite pieces to you at home now that the exhibition is now temporarily closed to the public.

What with it being Women’s History Month and having just had International Women’s day, it was very interesting to explore the subject of Masculinity, looking into what it means to be masculine in so many ways from fatherhood, queerness, power and the female perceptions of men, told through the power of photography.

We thought the exhibition was fascinating. Barbican shows are always huge and so you find yourself having to get more selective as the exhibition goes on. The work was thought provoking and powerful in many ways and this prompted discussion in our group over out post-exhibition supper.

As ever we love to share the works that most spoke to us when viewing the exhibition and so as it was Clio’s selection, we will check hers out first!

Adi Nes, Untitled, from the series Soldiers, 1999 Courtesy Adi Nes & Praz-Delavallade Paris, Los Angeles

Masculinities : Liberation through Photography Installation view, Barbican Art Gallery ©Tristan Fewings / Getty Images

‘I loved this series of the soldiers looking peaceful, relaxed and above all, un soldier like. It completely took them out of their usual, ultra masculine context and made you gaze at them in a completely unthreatening way.’

Lisa most enjoyed Karen Knorr’s Gentlemen Club Images. This series takes photographs inside traditional Gentlemen’s Clubs and juxtaposes them with text of overheard conversations had inside the walls. ‘The selection of each pair of photograph and text was, I felt, extremely ironic and highlighted how hypocritical, sexist or ignorant the statements really were.’

Karen Knorr, Newspapers are no longer ironed, Coins no longer boiled So far have Standards fallen from the series Gentlemen, 1981-83

Anna’s favourite was ‘Exiles’ by Sunil Gupta. ‘I thought all the captions were all really sad, lonely and hopeless, but in contrast I found the images quite romantic in a way.’ This series can be seen in the left hand corner of the below image.

Chloe had a tough time selecting hers and the exhibition featured a lot of her favourite photographers including Richard Billingham. However she finally settles on Rineke Dijkstra’s Bullfighters, 1996. ‘These beautiful portraits which are so subtle and elegant in colour present to us horrific post fight injuries of young bullfighters. I love how Dijkstra photographs people after a traumatic event.’ You can see the series on the right hand side of this installation image.

Finally, last but not least Georginas favourite series was The Ideal Man, 1978 by Hans Eijkelboom. In this series the artist invited 10 women to fashion him into their ‘ideal man’ using drawings and descriptions. The artist then changes clothes, hair and makeup in order to become their ‘Ideal man. The piece reverts the idea of female power and male hierarchy within relationships.

We wanted to particularly include the installation images in this edition in order to give you the full experience of the exhibition, just just view the images themselves. Everything from the framing to the hanging makes up the piece of work and presents it in a way where we the audience can develop our own opinions and feelings on it.

We hope you enjoyed this special LPA Pick and we hope we can all get back into the galleries and exhibition spaces very soon!