In the summer of 2023, I embarked on a social experiment: I posted a profile on a dating app, presenting myself as a photographer in search of models for male nude photography — a way of reversing the power hierarchies between the artist and her muse.
Within this movement, tenderness emerged as a corrosive agent, slowly unravelling the posture of masculinity. By releasing the injunctions of performance, bodies became forms that unsettled the established order, opening up a space of vulnerability and fluidity. Nudity became the ground for a subversion of norms, within which a chosen affinity can emerge — one freed from imposed assignations.
“Men have no bodies” (Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory)
