BEYOND XY – 4 Photographers Explore The Masculine Continuum

by Red Cell

Beyond XY

Four Photographers Explore The Masculine Continuum
June 26 – August 7, 2010
Loren Cameron / Joshua McVeity / Trix Rosen / David Vance

The PHD Gallery in St. Louis celebrate Gay Pride by turning the spotlight on LGBTQ photographers who specialize in the male form.

From the PHD site:
Gallery owner Philip Hitchcock selects photographers from Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Calgary whose work explores the diverse and changing meaning of “maleness,” masculinity, gender, and gender identity. On view, are works by celebrated transmale photographer Loren Cameron (San Francisco), Alberta College of Art and Design graduate Joshua McVeity (Calgary), documentary photographer/ journalist Trix Rosen (New York), and widely published fashion and commercial photographer David Vance (Miami).

Each artist photographs the male nude but from a decidedly personal perspective. Vance photographs the Alpha Male, focusing on the athleticism of his subjects while extolling Greco-Roman ideals of male beauty. McVeity’s subjects are fresh-faced youths, boyish, lithe, spontaneous, and unspoiled. Rosen’s images are culled from a ten-year study of French gender illusionist and performance artist, Frédéric Koenig, and possess a hypnotic eroticism. Cameron’s award winning photographs document transmale subjects (female to male transgender), including his arresting “classic physique” self-portraits. The works of these four photographers alternately reinforce, blur, or shatter conventional boundaries about masculinity and the defining characteristics of male identity in contemporary culture.

Dr. Alexis Matza, of Washington University in St. Louis, contends that BEYOND XY transcends universal notions about masculinity: “Rather than defining male as “not female,” the exhibit disrupts the idea that male has a universal meaning and instead explores the spectacular diversity of male embodiments.”