image and subject

The series does not begin with answers, but with a shift in perspective and a doubt: Do young men today still feel the pressure to be strong, dominant, and unshakeable - or have these expectations already changed? And if so, for whom do they still apply, and in which contexts? Between digital role models and cultural counter-concepts, new and sometimes contradictory ideas of masculinity are emerging. Figures like Andrew Tate promote a return to clear codes of power, control, and status. In between, young men navigate these influences - not as a homogeneous group, but as a spectrum of individual positions and experiences. The portraits in this series were created through a female gaze. This shift in perspective changes what becomes visible: moments often hidden in classical representations of masculinity - uncertainty, intimacy, quiet rituals - move to the foreground, while performative masculinity recedes into the background. The external gaze creates a new form of closeness, making trust, reflection, and subtle ambivalence visible. In some urban contexts, it seems possible to break free from traditional attributions; in others, they remain clearly present. Is "vulnerability" a conscious counter-model - or has it already become part of a new norm? To what extent is the question shifting from "What does it mean to be a man? " toward themes such as queerness, identity, and self-definition? The subjects were photographed mostly within their own living spaces - places that function simultaneously as refuge, stage, and experimental ground. The conversations that emerged there contradict one another, overlap, and remain fragmentary: some speak of pressure and expectation, others of freedom; some of uncertainty, others of indifference toward traditional role models. Self-staging exists alongside "classical" masculinity - raising new questions in the process. This work does not claim a singular truth. Instead, it brings together perspectives that resist a fixed image. Perhaps that is precisely its core: no longer the question of what a man is, but whether the question itself has already changed so fundamentally that complex human identity can no longer be defined through simple behaviors or fixed social expectations.