I have always found that the old model of what man should be is too restricted and often harmful. It inspired me to start this series and share my thoughts as images. “Toxic masculinity” term is used a lot nowadays and it was one of the things that made me think these issues more. I also think my history with depression shows in the images although it’s not so strongly present than in Dystopia series.

I do fine art images that are often a bit surreal. I think hiding the face often helps in getting the story more pronounced. If people see eyes they have more connection to a person in a photo. That is one of the reasons I like masks and I have a small collection of those. At the planning phase, I thought that for this series masks fit perfectly to the theme. I ended up using many different masks changing them in every picture. For me, the fabric and even the skull works like a mask from the perspective of the image.

Patched childhood

Background shadows

The scream

You do what I tell you

Bullies

The man and the rose

Leaving it behind

Animated photoshop edits

My home studio setup for the series

For this kind of series I usually do ‘good’ sketches before hand

I hand painted the background texture

I made the cube from one 200x50cm sheet of wood

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