The Male Experience

an Artist Statement

We men will never fully understand the challenges and experiences that women go through on their journey from girl to woman. We can relate to them, we can acknowledge their existence and accept them, but we will never know how they feel and look from the inside. Just as women will never fully comprehend the logics of boys, the choices made by men and the passions that fuel the heart of both.

One of my favorite quotes is the famous one from Plato: “Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.” That is true in so many ways, even being an understatement. They are not only the most unmanageable of God’s creatures, but also by far the most complex one. With their undeniable over-representation in almost every psychological disorder and behavioral problem, the minds of males remain a mystery to science. From lively and colorful fantasy and imagination to untamed genius, ingenuity and excessive omnipotence. From instinctive forces and denial of death to short circuits and the darkest destructive madness. An uninterrupted source of inspiration for artists and philosophers, and often a part of their own inevitable fate.

In a world of photography where most male photographers choose to photograph girls and women, I chose to be the oddball telling the photographic stories of males. My own experience as a boy and man, and my professional work with boys and young men, is undoubtedly why the world of males takes up the vast majority of my artistic production. I know how they feel, I know how they look when they feel and I know how they try to hide the fact that they feel. It has grown far beyond pure commercial interest into a mission in search of myself, looking for what being a male is all about. A fragmented search not limited to one distinct style and media, hoping that the outcome can shed some light on the male experience. My photos come from the heart – one photo at a time.

I see beauty in everything. Meaning is everywhere and in everything not limited to the obvious. I believe that humans are best explored by looking beyond the boundaries of normality, touching the secrets and the taboos that are rarely challenged. In places that are out of time and often out of this world, I try to create both the bizarre and grotesque, and the colourful and sweet. Because it is here – in the borderlands between horror and childish imagination – that I can observe and explore being male in an uncompromising world.