Finn Koene

Within today’s online and offline cultural climate there is a race towards dominance — muscularity is accepted as the expected measure of masculinity. This performance — one most men put on unconsciously — is demanded by the city, yet also laid bare within it.

The young men portrayed move between inherited scripts and versions of themselves still being formed. At times, the performance loosens — a body that has, briefly, nobody to perform to.

A Man and the World moves through the demands of heteronormativity, physical strength, and stoicism that shape young men. In both the portraits and the city landscapes, a suppressed tenderness persists. The work gathers fragments of a system these men inhabit — and of how they move with, and rarely against, its demands.