Gender flip

Boys Will Be Boys reveals all

For the past eight months, Fiona Buttigieg has been asking men if she can come into their bathrooms and observe them.

Strangely enough, most have been happy to oblige.

Young and middle-aged, black and white, Soloflexed and gym-averse, these men have allowed Buttigieg to not only witness but photograph their myriad bathroom rituals. The results are a photo series Buttigieg calls Boys Will be Boys, about the idiosyncratic, often ritualistic process individuals undergo to ready themselves for the world. The fruits of Buttigieg’s labor will be on display at Oakhurst’s Seen Gallery through May 2.

Buttigieg’s subjects include the meticulously groomed “Don” applying eye cream from a delicate pot, and perhaps acknowledging the absurdity of the gesture with a mischievous grin. Less obviously aware of the camera’s presence are subjects like blue-eyed waif “Adam,” framed against his bathroom wall painted with blue sky and clouds.

Buttigieg saw it all. Head-to-toe body shaving, nail polishing, showering, bubble bathing, nail filing and daydreaming.

Obscure shaving rituals are big, like the man who shaves his entire chest, but always leaves a small portion of hair intact, as if total hairlessness might leave him Samson-vulnerable. Buttigieg’s funny, touching, captivating images are an eye-opener for anyone who has ever wondered just what goes on in the verboten zone of the bathroom.

A native of Malta who grew up in London, Buttigieg is currently a photography student in the MFA program at Georgia State. Boys Will Be Boys began when Buttigieg observed her roommate Josh’s copious bathroom time logged dying his hair. That first in-house muse inspired Buttigieg to “go deeper,” though she admits that she has always been intrigued by the private lives of men.

“I was one of those little girls, every time my dad was shaving I’d be mesmerized. I love watching men shave.”

Vanity and grooming are the surface preoccupation captured by Buttigieg’s camera. But it turns out there’s more to it. Much more. Boys Will Be Boys is a photographic record of something fleetingly glimpsed in image and in life: masculine vulnerability.

A man identified as “Gargoyle” perfectly illustrates how vulnerability crops up in unexpected places. Despite his tough-guy look, “Gargoyle” becomes more than a study in brawny masculinity within Buttigieg’s sensitive vision. Buttigieg has captured the intimidating Gargoyle performing the delicate, stereotypically feminine gesture of applying blood-red nail polish to his fingers while seated on his sofa beneath an image of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, another sensitive soul trapped inside a scary exterior.

Buttigieg acknowledges that Boys Will Be Boys is a post-feminist, political gesture aimed at resisting the tradition of guy photographers surveying girl subjects. We have grown accustomed to images of girls and women in everything from porn to conceptual photography giving it up for the camera, but men’s private lives and rituals are less often observed.

Looking around at all of the young, hot, art school-educated female photographers like Justine Kurland, Katy Grannan and Lauren Greenfield, Buttigieg saw women merely mimicking a long-standing tradition of photographers “capturing” women.

“What about men?” Buttigieg thought. “I know what it is like to be a girl. But I want to know what men do,” she says.

In the way “Sean” towel-dries his face, or the way baby-faced “Justin” stands framed in the shower, Buttigieg reveals a fragility and sweetness in her subjects that questions how we have traditionally seen boys and men in authoritative, active, masters-of-the-universe poses.

But Boys Will Be Boys is a project with more facets than the Hope diamond. Like the way Buttigieg puts women in the role of voyeurs in a brazen 21st-century gender flip. The old porno axiom goes that men are the visually stimulated gender, but Buttigieg’s project acknowledges the fascination men hold for women and the pleasure they derive from looking.

And it’s true. You just can’t take your eyes off of Buttigieg’s guys.

Felicia.feaster@creativeloafing.com


Buttigieg’s work also can be seen at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery beginning April 24, and at Galerie MC beginning April 16.