I Melt With You

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Research background: This project extends my research into the male gaze, objectification and agency. Laura Mulvey and John Berger identified the male gaze back in the 1970s, but in recent years with the advent of the digital age, processes of representation and power are shifting (Ariana Azoulay). This project interrogates how young men as savvy consumers of visual culture engage with contemporary processes of representation given the long history of men looking and women being looked at (according to Mulvey, Berger et al). Specifically, it addresses the oscillation that occurs between identification with the subject and desire for the subject in representations of young men in contemporary photographic artworks.

Research contribution: This project culminated in an artist’s monograph containing 52 photographic works published by M.33, a Melbourne-based independent commercial publisher specialising in photographic practice. The photographs reveal a complex relationship between objectification and identification within the contemporary photographic process, one that is particularly complicated when the subject is a young male who enjoys gendered social privilege. These young male subjects are at times able to reject the viewer’s gaze or to even invite it in ways that have been historically denied from women. These portraits are performative moments that construct imagined narratives around gender and masculinity.

Research significance: I Melt With You was published in 2019 by M.33. A specialist photographic publisher who has published other monographs by artists such as Darren Sylvester, Jane Burton, Janina Green, Simon Terrill and Matthew Sleeth. The monograph has been reviewed by Eyeline and Paper Journal. Individual works from this series have been shown at the Centre for Contemporary Photography and Margaret Lawrence Gallery alongside artists including Bill Henson, David Noonan, Destiny Deacon, Brook Andrew, Anne Noble, Patrick Pound, Polixeni Papapetrou and Simryn Gill.