Despite my interest in psychology and human behaviour, I found that I knew so little about what does it mean to be the opposite gender of me. As a result, I started my research on the topic of toxic masculinity but quickly drifted away from “toxicity” to shocking numbers of male suicide. This led to an understanding of how big of a gap there is in emotional intelligence between genders. And how are still tied up in the old views of manhood.
The next step I took was to invited my male friends to educate me about what does it mean to be a man. Every man I reach out to was very interested and willing to share their experience about the struggles they are going through. As well as situations, they have been where they have been told "to be a man" in one form or another. To visualize my new knowledge I created transparent prints of our conversations. With this project, I would like to start an uncomfortable conversation about emotions, being blue without a barrier of gender.
About the process:
I asked my models to talk with me about a very personal experience which some of them has never spoken about before. In this situation, nudes have felt very appropriate, being bare emotionally and physically. Cyanotype blue represents calmness, sometimes the feeling of being blue and endless see of emotions under the surface. Images were made on a large-format camera and were straight exposed on the glass plates, to prevent any manipulation of the moment which was originally captured. Rough and sharp edges of glass plates could easily be connected to the strength and fragility of the people my project has captured.