Juan

By Mano Martinez, Spain

The natural light, the informal situations, and boys that Mano selects make of his project a photographic statement of the artist’s perspective on the male erotic nude and the author’s photography.

Mano’s work blatantly demonstrates but, at the same time, not being pretentious, how the guys are now the new pin ups. The naked body of man now has for the first time an important role as an object of desire. The male nude has come out of the closet. New masculinities are coming out of the closet. According to Mano, if we’ll continue to objectify, we’re going to objectify all of us. In fashion and advertising we’re used to seeing half-naked women, and in sexual attitudes close to the ridicule. These attitudes begin to dilute at the moment there’s a change of roles and the man begins to adopt that role. The commercial effect of the naked body of man is different because society has transmitted the image of unwarranted gender stereotypes, and that reveals how absurd objectification is. The entrance of the naked man in advertising helps us to realize that it is possible to get out of the established clichés, that we can all be attractive without being caught by the stereotypes of society. The new masculinities can help to get rid of that motivation of contempt for the feminine and of overvaluation for the masculine, and Mano transfers this concept to the author’s portrait.

How male erotic photography has developed throughout history it is of great interest for Mano. Only since the 70s artists began to represent naked men’s bodies from a plastic point of view, without any justification about the nature of their works. Until then, that tendency existed, but always hidden. In this sense, Mano’s work arises as a result of mixing his interest in the history of eroticism, in the representation of the male body in art, and in the attraction he feels for a certain type of masculine beauty.

One can not fail to mention the admiration that Mano feels for other male erotic photographers, which it’s led him to become part of this group of artists. His/their photography is a celebratory of the male body. Warhol, Pierre et Gilles, Bacon, Mapplethorpe, Weber, Ritts are, for Mano, those who first channel this tendency and helped to reach the first steps towards true freedom of expression and normalization of both eroticism and male nude in Art. Painting, either erotic or pornographic, was classified as Art and exhibited in museums, but photography was limited to private consumption. The representation of the reality through photography made artists to adopt the existing codes in other plastic arts, always citing Classical Antiquity, for the distribution of their work. Despite this, all that masked male erotic photography from 1839 to 1969 set guidelines and broke taboos, and it has influenced what is done today, not only at artistic level but also in advertising. It could be said that the male erotic without justifications in photography returns to Art the place it occupied before the arrival of Christianity, before the arrival of the prohibitions.

Mano’s portraits speak of himself and his gaze through other bodies. On the anatomy of his models he puts his desires and his feelings, seizes his gestures and, until a certain point, vampirizes them to capture in image the condensation of this experience.

Medium: Photography
Material: Printed on Epson Ultrasmooth Fine Art 250 gr / m2 paper
Size: 30 X 40 cm
Year: 2019