no matter what
Artist portraits and exhibition opening photography by Ben Reason
AMP Gallery, Peckham. 12th -14th July 2024
Our relationships with our bodies have become more complex than ever. Every day, we are bombarded with images through myriad platforms, dating apps, and media – all of which play a substantial role in shaping our body ideals and self-perception.
The ‘ideal’ of male beauty is often warped and misunderstood in art and photography, and this is acutely felt within gay and queer masculine spaces. Insecurities around the male body are all too familiar to me: both in my relationship with my own image and the people I photograph in my work. I see a constant tension between the ‘truth’ of what we perceive and objective reality.
Everyone has a different relationship with their own body. To navigate the modern world, we must reconcile our view of ourselves with an external idea of ‘normal’. It is through everyday, mundane activities such as exercise, dating, and talking to peers that we realise there is no simple standard of what our bodies should look like.
Through unashamed documentation of the variations in its form, these photographs – as well as those yet to be taken – aim to capture the spectrum of 'true' male beauty.
