THE
ARCHAIC MAN
2020-23
Take a moment to imagine a man. What does he look like? Stereotypically muscular, tall, dominating? Maybe your vision is more prosaic, a beer belly protruding through a tight Fat Face top and a pair of kind eyes? Or is he older – a father perhaps? What we picture is a compromise between those men in our lives whom we care for and societal projections of masculinity, or, to put it more simplistically, between your experience and your expectation.
These factors are reciprocally linked; the expectation of what a man looks like will be reinforced by those groups and individuals committed to conforming. Whereas, if the societal projection is too divorced from the physical and mental attributes of a population, it will be reject and forced to evolve into something more applicable.
I wanted to explore this phenomenon and use photography to draw an aesthetic and conceptual link between modern British men and archaic and classical sculpture – one of the first studies of the nude male form.
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.